Bellow, Saul - Dean's December, The (Pocket Books, 1983) PDF

The Critics Acclaim
THE DEAN'S DECEMBER
"THE VITALITY, HUMANI TY, ANGER AND WI T OF

BELLOW ARE BA CK ... BELLOW, ALONG WITH
UPDIKE, MALAMUD, CHEE VER ... IS WHAT WE
HAVE MOST T O CHERISH IN C ON TEMPORARY
AMERICAN LITERATURE."
-Boston Sunday Globe
"THE LATES T AND BEST ... his fine, fictional

instrument is perfectly tuned ... two generations of
Bellow fans should not be disappointed."
-Time Magazine
"Bellow is brilliant In this meticulously crafted

novel."
-Publishers Weekly
"THE DEAN'S DECEMBER... is renewed testa

ment to a grand career, our greatest since Faulk
ner's and Frost's ... at an age when most writers
are hopelessly repeating themselves, Bellow is still
finding good new things to do."
-Ghicago Sun-Times
SAUL
BELLOW
THE DEAN'S
DECEMBER
�
PUBLISHED BY POCKET BOOKS NEW YORK
Although portions of ttus novel are denved from real
events, each character m 1t 1s fictional, a composite
drawn from several mdivtduals and from tmagmatton.
No reference to any livmg person ts mtended or should
be inferred.
POCKET BOOKS. a Simon & Schuster divisiOn of

GULF & WESTERN CORPORATION
1230 Avenue of the Americas, NewYork, NY 10020
Copyright© 1982 by Saul Bellow Ltmited
Published by arrangement with Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number· 80-8705
All rights reserved, mcluding the nght to reproduce

this book or portion�> thereof m any form whatsoever
For mformation address Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc ,
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ISBN: �71-45806-X
First Pocket Books pnntmg January. 1983
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of Simon & Schuster
Pnnted tn the U S.A

SAUL BELLOW was born in Lachine. Quebec, m 1915, and
at the age of nine moved with his family to Chicago. He
attended the University of Chicago, received his bache
lor's degree from Northwestern University in 1937. and
served in the Merchant Marine during World War II.
In addition to his novels, he has contributed fiction.
criticism and reportage to such magazines and newspa
pers as The New Yorker, Esquire. Partisan Review, Amer
ican Scholar, Harper's, The New York Times Book Re
view, Atlantic Monthly and Newsday.
Saul Bellow has been the recipient of an unprecedented
number of literary awards. He has won the National Book
Award three times, first for The Adventures of Augie
March (1953). then for Herzog (1964)--which also made
htm the first American author to receive the Inter national
Literary Award-and the third for Mr. Sammler's Planet
(1970). In 1%8, he was awarded the Croix de Chevalier
des Arts et L ettres by the French government, the highest
literary distinction awarded by France to non-citizens.
He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1975 for Humboldt's Gift.
In October 1976, Saul Bellow was awarded the Nobel
Pnze tn Literature, "for the human understanding and
subtle analysis of contemporary culture that are com
btned in his work."
The Dean's December is his first novel since receiving
that award.
Corde, who led the life of an executive in America
wasn't a college dean a kind of executive?-found
himself six or seven thousand miles from his base, in
Bucharest, in winter, shut up in an old-fashioned
apartment. Here everyone was kind-family and
friends, warmhearted people-he liked them very
much, to him they were "old Europe." But they had
their own intense business. This was no ordinary visit.
His wife's mother was dying. Corde had come to give
support. But there was little he could do for Minna.
Language was a problem. People spoke little French,
less English. So Corde, the Dean, spent his days in
Minna's old room sipping strong plum brandy, leafing
through old books, staring out of the windows at
earthquake-damaged buildings, winter skies, gray pi
geons, pollarded trees, squalid orange-rusty trams hiss
ing under trolley cables.
Corde's mother-in-law, who had had first a heart
attack and then a stroke, was in the hospital. Only the
Party hospital had the machines to keep her alive, but
the rules were rigid there. She was in intensive care,
and visits were forbidden. Corde and Minna had flown
a day and a night to be with her but in five days had
seen her only twice-the first time by special dispensa
tion, the second without official permission. The hospi
tal superintendent, a colonel in the secret police, was
greatly offended because his rules had been broken. He
was a tough bureaucrat. The staff lived in terror of him.
1
2 SAUL BELLOW
Minna and her aunt Gigi had decided (Corde took part
in their discussions) that it would be polite to ask for an
appointment. "Let's try to have a sensible talk with
h.Im. ,
On the telephone the Colonel had said, "Yes,
come ."
Minna, when she went to see him, brought her
husband along-perhaps an American, a dean from
Chicago, not quite elderly but getting there, would
temper the Colonel's anger. No such thing happened.
The Colonel was a lean, hollow-templed, tight
wrapped, braided-whip sort of man. Clearly, he wasn't
going to give any satisfaction. An institution must keep
its rules. Corde put in his two cents; he mentioned that
he was an administrator himself-he had worked for
many years on the Paris Herald, so he spoke French
well enough. The Colonel politely let him speak his
piece; he darkly, dryly listened, mouth compressed. He
received, tolerated, the administrative comparison, de
spised it. He did not reply, and when the Dean was
done he turned again to Minna.
There had been an impropriety. Under no circum
stances could the administration tolerate that. Out
raged, Minna was silent. What else could she be? Here
only the Colonel had the right to be outraged. His high
feeling-and he allowed it to go very high-was mod
erated in expression only by the depth of his voice.
How sharp could a basso sound? Corde himself had a
deep voice, deeper than the Colonel's, vibrating more.
Where the Colonel was tight, Corde was inclined to be
loose. The Colonel's sparse hair was slicked straight
back, military style; Corde's baldness was more ran
dom, a broad bay, a straggling growth of back hair.
From this enlarged face, the brown gaze of an intricate
mind of an absent, probably dreamy tendency followed
the conversation. You could not expect a Communist
secret police colonel to take such a person seriously. He
was only an American, a dean of students from some
where in the middle of the country. Of these two
The Dean's December 3
visitors, Minna was by far the more distinguished. This

beautiful woman, as the Colonel was sure to know, was
a professor of astronomy, had an international reputa
tion. A "hard" scientist. It was important for the
Colonel to establish that he was not moved by such
considerations. He was in as hard a field as she.
Harder.
Minna spoke emotionally about her mother. She was
an only child. The hearing the Colonel gave her was
perfectly correct. A daughter who had come such a
distance; a mother in intensive care, half paralyzed.
Without knowing the language, Corde could under
stand all this easily enough, and interpreted the Colo
nel's position: Where you had hospitals, you had dying
people, naturally. Because of the special circumstances
an exception had been made for the doamna and her
husband on their arrival. But there had been a second
visit (here the incensed emphasis again), without per
mission.
Minna, in terse asides, translated for her husband. It
wasn't really necessary. He loosely sat there in wrin
kled woolen trousers and sports jacket, the image of
the inappropriate American-in all circumstances inap
propriate, incapable of learning the lessons of the
twentieth century; spared, or scorned, by the forces of
history or fate or whatever a European might want to
call them. Corde was perfectly aware of this.
He nodded, his brown eyes, bulging somewhat, in
communion with the speckled activity of the floor,
uniformly speckled over the entire hospital. The direc
tor's office was tall but not much roomier than a
good-sized closet-a walk-in closet at home. The desk,
too, was small. Nothing was big except the Colonel's
authority. The electric fixture was hung very high,
remote. Here, as everywhere in Bucharest, the light
was inadequate. They were short on energy in Rumania
-something about subnormal rainfall and low water in
the dams. That's right, blame nature. December brown
set in at about three in the afternoon. By four it had
4 SAUL BELLOW
climbed down the stucco of old walls, the gray of
Communist residential blocks: brown darkness took
over the pavements, and then came back again from
the pavements more thickly and isolated the street
lamps. These were feebly yellow in the impure melan
choly winter effluence. Air-sadness, Corde called this.
In the final stage of dusk, a brown sediment seemed to
encircle the lamps. Then there was a livid death
moment. Night began. Night was very difficult here,
thought Albert Corde. He sat slumped and heavy
headed, his wide head seeking the support it could not
get from its stem. This brought his moody eyes forward
all the more, the joined brows, the bridge of his
spectacles out of level. It was his wife with her fine
back, her neck, her handsome look, who made the
positive impression. But that was nothing to the whip
lash Colonel. Perhaps it only reminded him that this
distinguished lady had defected twenty years ago, when
she had been allowed out to study in the West, was here
only because her mother was dying, arriving under the
protection of her husband, this American dean; landing
without a visa, met by a U.S. official (this meant a
certain degree of influence). The Colonel would have
all this information, of course. And Minna was not in a
strong position; she had never formally renounced her
Rumanian citizenship. If it had a mind to, the govern
ment could make trouble for her.
Valeria, the old woman, was not a Party member
now, hadn't been one since, as Minister of Health, she
fell in disgrace. That had happened thirty years ago.
She was then denounced publicly by press and radio,
expelled, threatened with prison, with death, too.
Before he could come to trial, one of her colleagues
who fell in the same shake-up had his head hacked off
in his cell. This old militant who had survived Anton
escu and also the Nazis was butchered with an ax or a
meat cleaver. Dr. Valeria somehow came through. Dr.
Valeria herself had founded this very hospital, the
Party hospital. Three weeks ago, probably feeling the
first touches of sickness (Corde thought of it as the
advance death thrill, the final presage; each of us in
peculiar communication with his own organs and their
sick-signals), she began to make the rounds, out all day
on the buses and trolley cars, said Gigi, calling on old
acquaintances, arranging to be admitted. She had been
rehabilitated late in the fifties, her pension restored,
and she had quiet connections of her own among the
old-timers of the bureaucracy.
So she was hooked in now to the respirator, scanner,
monitor. The stroke had knocked out the respiratory
center, her left side was paralyzed. She couldn't speak,
couldn't open her eyes. She could hear, however, and
work the fingers of her right hand. Her face was
crisscrossed every which way with tapes, like the Union
Jack. Or like windowpanes in cities under bombard
ment. Corde, an old journalist before he became a
dean, knew these wartime scenes--sandbags, window
tapes. Never saw the crisscross on a face like hers,
though; too delicate for it. Still, the next step, a
tracheotomy, was even worse. He was an experienced
man. He knew the stages.
Before you were allowed to approach Valeria you
had to put on a sterile gown and oversocks, huge and
stiff. Also a surgical cap and mask. Valeria understood
that her daughter had come, and her eyes moved under
the lids. Minna was there. And protected by her
husband-further proof of his dependability. When
Corde spoke to her, she answered by pressing his
fingers. Her son-in-law then noticed for the first time a
deformity of one of her knuckles. Had it been broken
once, was it arthritic? It was discolored. He had never
before seen her hair down, only braided and pinned.
He would never have guessed this fine white hair to be
so long. There was also her big belly. Beneath it her
thin legs. That, too, was painful to see. Every bit of it
moved him-more than that, it worked him up; more
than that, it made him wild, drove him into savage
fantasies. He wanted to cry, as his wife was doing.
6 SAUL BELLOW
Tears did come, but also an eager violence, a kind of
get-it-over ecstasy mingling pity and destructiveness.
Part of him was a monster. What else could it be?
These reactions were caused by exhaustion, partly.
They must have been. The trip had been long. He was
fagged, dried out. His guts were strained. He felt
plugged in the rear. Circulation to the face and scalp
seemed insufficient. And a kind of demonic excitement
rose up, for which no resolution seemed possible. Like
evil forces, frantic, foul, working away. At the same
time, his tears for the old woman were genuine, too.
For the moment, he could suppress nothing, force
nothing. Equally helpless before good and bad. On the
electronic screen of the monitor, symbols and digits
shimmied and whirled, he heard a faint scratching and
ticking.
The Colonel, towards the last of the interview, put
on a long, judicious look--<:unning, twisting the knife
-and said that if Valeria was removed from the
intensive care unit, Minna might come as often as she
liked. Unhooked from the machines, the old woman
would die in fifteen minutes. This of course he did not
spell out. But there was your choice, madam. This was
the man's idea of a joke. You delivered it at the point of
a knife.
That part of the conversation Corde had missed.
Minna had told him about it. "My homecoming," she
said after the interview, as they were going down the
cement walk to the parking lot.
"Like tying a plastic bag over your face and telling
you to breathe deep."
"I could kill him." Perhaps she could, from the set of
her face-big eyes, intaken lips. "What should I do
now, Albert? She'll be expecting us, waiting for us."
They were riding home in Petrescu's Russian com
pact, one of those strong dreary cars they drive in the
satellite countries.
Mihai Petrescu had been chef de cabinet to Minna's
father and to Valeria when she succeeded her late
husband in the Ministry. He was attached to the family.

Not himself a physician, he must have been the Party
watchdog. He couldn't have had much to report. Dr.
Raresh had been naively ideological, a Christian and
moral Communist, praying for God's help before he
opened a patient's skull. The country's first neurosur
geon, trained in Boston by the famous Cushing, he had
been too emotional, too good, too much the high
principled doctor to make a Communist official. Minna
said she could never understand how he could have
been taken in so completely. In the thirties he had
brushed aside as bourgeois propaganda what he had
read in the world press about the Great Terror, Stalin's
labor camps, the Communists in Spain, the pact with
Hitler. Enthusiastic when Russian troops reached Bu
charest, he went into the streets with roses for the
soldiers. Within a week they had taken the watch from
his wrist, put him out of his little Mercedes and driven it
away. But he made no complaints. He did not move
into a villa like other ministers. His colleagues disliked
this. His austerity was too conspicuous. Before he died,
the regime had already decided the man was a fool and
kicked him upstairs. He was named ambassador to the
U.S.A. They didn't want him around protesting the
disappearance of his medical friends one after another.
He didn't live to go to Washington. He lasted only a
year.
When he died Valeria was offered the Ministry. She
probably thought it might be dangerous to refuse.
Minna was then a small girl. Petrescu stayed on as chef
de cabinet. Lower-echelon KGB was how Corde fig
ured him. Mihai seemed to have converted the official
connection into familial intimacy. He told Corde when
they had a schnapps together, "Elle a ete une mere, une
consolatrice pour moi. " And for others, by the dozens.
Valeria was a matriarch. Corde was well aware of that.
But sometimes Petrescu stayed away for years. He
had not been seen for many months before Valeria's
stroke. And even now he disappeared, reappeared
8 SAUL BELLOW
unpredictably. Petrescu was squat, small-eyed; his fe
dora was unimpeded by hair so that the fuzz of the hat
brim mingled with the growth of his ears in all
revealing daylight. In every conversation about Valeria
his sentences had a way of creeping upwards, his pitch
climbed as high as his voice could bring it, and then
there was a steep drop, a crack of emotion. He was
dramatically fervent about Valeria. Studying his face,
Corde at the same time estimated that something like
three-fourths of his creases were the creases of a very
tough character, a man you could easily imagine slam
ming the table during an interrogation, capable perhaps
of pulling a trigger. It wasn't just in Raymond Chandler
novels that you met tough guys. All kinds of people are
tough. But with the ladies Petrescu was wonderful, he
behaved with gallantry, or else with saintly delicacy, he
jumped up, moved chairs, tumbled out of the driver's
seat to open the doors of his Soviet car. Today he was
standing by, upstairs, with advice, telephoning, volun
teering, murmuring, as silken with Minna and Tanti
Gigi as the long fleshy lobes of his ears were silken. His
underlip was full of a fervent desire to serve. Before he
disappeared-for he soon did disappear-he played a
leading part in the emotional composition whose theme
was Valeria's last days. Great Valeria's end. For she
was great-this was the conclusion Corde finally
reached.
·
T he apartment was shared by Valeria and Tanti Gigi.

Corde and Minna were staying there. Visiting nieces,
cousins, had to go to hotels. But under the special
consanguinity regulations, the Cordes were permitted
to move in with Gigi. Something of an invalid, Tanti
Gigi managed the household with hysterical efficiency.
She seemed to do it all in bathrobe and slippers and
from her bed. When he knew the problems of the city
better-the queues forming at daybreak, the aged
women with oilcloth shopping bags waiting throughout
the day-Corde was able to appreciate Gigi's virtuosi
ty. T he Oat was as tentatively heated as it was electrical-
ly dim. Radiators turned cold after breakfast. The

faucets went dry at 8 A.M. and did not run again until
evening. The bathtub had no stopper. You flushed the
toilet with buckets of water. Corde was not a man to
demand comforts. He merely observed all this--a
hungry observer. The parlor, once the brain surgeon's
waiting room, was furnished with aging corpulent over
stuffed chairs of bald, peeling leather. There were
openwork brass lamps which resembled minarets. It
was all quality stuff from the bourgeois days. The
Biedermeier cabinets were probably despised in the
twenties by young revolutionists, but in old age they
clung to these things as relics of former happiness. Very
odd, thought Corde, how much feeling went into these
sofas, old orange brocade and frames with mother-of
pearl inlay; and the bric-a-brac and thin carpets, gilt
framed pictures, fat editions of Larousse, antiquated
medical books in German and English. After her
disgrace and loss of pension, during the period of
ostracism, Valeria sold off the best of the silver and
china. The last of the Baccarat had been smashed in the
recent earthquake. While they were lying on the floor
Tanti Gigi had heard the crystal minutely crumbling
and tinkling, dancing on the floor, she said. The objects
that remained were of no terrific value, but they were
obviously consecrated-they were the family's old
things: Dr. Raresh's worktable, Minna's bed, the pic
tures in her room, even her undergraduate notebooks.
Much better this old flat-it was a Balkan version of
the Haussmann style-than the Intercontinental Hotel
and the Plaza Athenee wittt their deluxe totalitarian
comforts and the goings-on of the secret police
securitate: devices behind the draperies, tapes spinning
in the insulated gloom. But you were bugged in the flat,
too, probably with the latest American bugs. You name
it, the manufacturing U.S. would sell it. Or else the
French, the Japanese, the Italians would sell it. So if
you wanted to talk privately you went outside, and in
the streets, too, Minna would nudge you, directing
10 SAUL BELLOW
your attention to certain men lounging, walking slowly
or chatting. "Yup, I can spot 'em myself," said Corde.
The fat concierge, Ioanna, was in continual conversa
tion with these loungers. She reported to them. But she
was also a friend of the family. That was how it went.
Valeria and Tanti Gigi had more than once explained
matters to him.
Corde knew the old girls very well. Valeria had
visited the States, and he and Minna had often met
them both abroad. When they were eligible for visas,
the old sisters flew to Paris, Frankfurt, London. Of
course they had to be sent for-no dollars, no passports
-and they came out of the country without a penny,
not even cab fare. Only last spring Valeria had joined
Corde and Minna in England.
Valeria studied people closely, but she may not have
been aware of the important place she held in Corde's
feelings. How could she be? The deep-voiced slouching
Dean would sit with his legs stretched out and his neck
resting on the back of his chair like a reporter on a
story, killing time patiently in a waiting room. His
nonchalant way of looking at you, the extruded brown
eyes, that drowned-in-dreams look, was probably the
source of his reputation as a swinger, a chaser. Minna
and Valeria had been warned against him. E'rotic
instability, womanizing, was the charge. Judged by the
standards of perfect respectability, Corde had not been
a good prospect for marriage. "It's true he's been
married before, but so have I," said Minna to her
mother. Valeria's influence was great, but in this in
stance Minna made her own decision. It was a sound
decision. There was no instability. Corde proved to be
entirely straight. After several years of observation
Valeria gave him a clearance. She said to her daughter,
"You were perfectly right about Albert." She was not
after all one of your parochial Balkan ladies. She had
studied Freud, Ferenczi, she was a psychiatrist--Corde
forgave her the psychiatry; maybe psychiatry was dif-
ferent in the Balkans. He certainly wasn't kinky enough
to be written up as a case history.
So there they were, in Minna's old room. It was still a
schoolgirl's room. Valeria had kept it that way. There
were textbooks, diplomas, group photographs. This
was obviously Valeria's favorite place, where she read,
sewed, wrote letters. Corde was curious about the
books that crammed the shelves. Many were English
and French. He found an old collection of Oscar Wilde
published by some B ritish reader's society in red card
board, faded to weeping pink, and looked up some of
the poems he had learned by heart as an adolescent,
melodramatic pieces like "The Harlot's House," the
puppet prostitute and the clockwork lover, the scandals
of Greek love, the agonies of young men who had done
so well at school but woke up beside their murdered
mistresses in London with blood and wine upon their
hands. Why had they killed them? That's what love
does to you. An unsatisfactory proposition. Corde
particularly wanted to find the lines about the red hell
to which a man's sightless soul might stray. He found it,
it amused him-the earth reeling underfoot, and the
weary sunflowers--but not for long. He put down the
not-so-amusing book. He found the street more inter
esting.
Earthquake damage was still being repaired. A ma
chine, a wheeled crane, worked its way down the block.
A crew of two stood in the large bucket to patch cracks
in stucco, working around the open porches. Women in
kerchiefs whacked their carpets in the morning. From
all sides one heard the percussion of carpet beaters.
Give it to them! The dust went off in the sunlight. A
dog barked, whined as if a beater had given him a
whack, then barked again. The barking of the dog, a
protest against the limits of dog experience (for God's
sake, open the universe a little more!)--5<> Corde felt,
being shut in. He might have gone rambling about the
city, but Minna was afraid the securitate would pick him
12 SAUL BELLOW
up. What if he were accused of selling dollars illegally?

She had heard stories about this. Friends warned her.
All right, she had worries enough, and he stayed put.
She was busy in the parlor. Friends she hadn't seen in
twenty years came to call-Viorica, Doina, Cornelia.
Corde was asked to present himself in the parlor, the
American husband. The telephone rang all the time.
As soon as possible he went back to the room, his
retreat. For three days he thought how much good it
would do him to go out and walk off the tensions he had
brought from Chicago (cramps in his legs), then he
stopped thinking about it.
Back to the shelves. He pulled away the beds to see
what titles they concealed. Pedagogy was one of Val
eria's interests. He found an unpublished primer with
pictures of cows, piglets, ponies. Curious about Min
na's adolescence, he leafed through albums, studying
snapshots. In the drawers he turned up coins from
former regimes, embossed buttons, documents from
the time of the monarchy, stopped watches, Byzantine
crosses on thin silver chains, newspaper clippings,
letters from Dr. Cushing to Raresh, one of his best
pupils. There were also items about Corde-installed
as dean, receiving an honorary degree from Grinnell.
Minna had sent her mother a copy of the first install
ment of his long article on Chicago, the one that had
stirred up so much trouble. Trouble was still raging.
That was some of what he had brought with him.
Valeria had obviously read his piece closely, making
check marks in the margin where he had described the
crazy state of the prisoners in County Jail-the rule of
the barn bosses, the rackets, beatings, sodomizings and
stabbings in the worst of the tiers: in "Dodge City,"
"H-1"; the prisoners who tucked trouser bottoms into
socks to keep the rats from running up their legs in the
night. Now there was a red hell for the soul to stray
into.
Obviously it intrigued Valeria the psychiatrist to
study the personality of her son-in-law as it was re-
vealed in his choice o f topics; his accounts o f beatings
and buggerings, of a murder with the sharp-honed
metal of a bed leg,were underscored in red. He pored
over these passages, hunched under his coat, noting
how often he had mentioned the 1V in each dayroom,
the soaps and the sporting events, "society's alterna
tives continually in view," and "how strangely the mind
of the criminal is stocked with images from that other
anarchy,the legitimate one." Valeria had circled these
sentences. She hadn't received the second installment.
Mainly about the Rufus Ridpath scandal,the Spofford
Mitchell case, it was filled with disobliging remarks
about City Hall, the press, the sheriff, the governor.
Corde had let himself go,indignant,cutting, reckless.
He had made the college unhappy. One of its deans
taking everybody on? A bad scene,an embarrassment.
The administration behaved with restraint, but it was
jittery. It was especially upset by Part Two. What
would Valeria have thought of Part Two?
Valeria had never made Corde feel that she objected
to the marriage; she had too much breeding for that,
she was too tactful to antagonize him. She did study
him, yes,but without apparent prejudice. Really,she
was fair-minded. Although he hadn't much liked being
under observation, he conceded that it wasn't unrea
sonable. "But Christ,do I need a parole officer?" Of
course he was uncomfortable,and when he was uncom
fortable he grew more silent, speaking only in a brief
rumble. What was most distressing about being
watched was that it made him see himself-a dish
faced man,long in the mouth. You could hardly blame
him for being sensitive to close scrutiny. In giving his
order to a waiter once, asking for an omelette fines
herbes, he was pointedly corrected by Valeria. "The s
is sounded-feenzerbes. " He was stunned, the abyss
of pettiness opened. It was an abyss.
Nevertheless he was strongly drawn to the old
woman. Last spring the three of them had stayed
together at Durrants in George Street, and he was
14 SAUL BELLOW
always in their company, didn't care to go off by

himself. He tagged along to Liberty's, Jaeger's, Har
rods. He enjoyed that. And last April great London
had been wide open and the holiday gave him the kind
of human "agreement" (he could find no other term for
it) he very badly needed, was evidently looking for
continually. He gladly followed the two ladies through
Harrods ("Harrods of Jewry" to him, but now filled
with Arabs). The parcels were heaped up in Valeria's
room. He said to Minna,"Why not buy her something
she can't give away, for herself only?"
"She doesn't seem to need ... " Minna began. "It's
enough for her to be with-with us. And especially
here, in London. She adores London."
No one understood better than the English how to
build coziness in a meager setting. You polished up old
tables, you framed dinginess in margins of gilt; without
apology, you dignified worn corners, brushed up the
bald nap of your velours-these were the Dickensian
touches that Corde approved. He wasn't quite sure how
Valeria viewed this less than luxurious hotel. Couldn't
her American son-in-law do better? Coming out of
Bucharest, you probably would have preferred the
Ritz. But he was a dean, merely, not the governor of
Texas-no, the governor wouldn't have been good
enough for Minna,nor a member of the board of Chase
Manhattan. Still, the feeling of human "agreement"
would not have been possible without the old woman's
acceptance.She accepted him, soon enough.He was all
right. T hey were both all right. If his manner was quiet
(the parolee on good behavior),hers was undemonstra
tively accommodating. In the morning she went down
early to buy the Times for Corde (by half past eight the
porter was likely to tell him, "Sorry, sir, sold out").
She made sure that there was a copy of the paper on her
son-in-law's chair. Then she sat in her neat suit,waiting
in the breakfast room, the green silk scarf about her
neck-lovely blue-green. Until Minna joined her,Val
eria did not accept so much as a cup of tea from the
Spanish waiters. As breakfast drew to a n end, Corde
turned his chair aside slightly. The Dean, drawing back
his head peculiarly-his neck was thin-focused his
gaze on the Times (a foreign paper printed in his own
language). Reading, he omitted no item of politics,the
experienced newspaperman making his own swift ob
servations. "I know these guys," was his attitude. As
the ladies discussed their plans for the day, the Dean
glanced also at the currency rates,the obituaries of civil
servants and retired soldiers, the Court Calendar,
items from Wimbledon-matters of minimal interest.
He experienced alternate waves of bleakness and of
warmth towards Valeria for her admirable control over
such a diversity of factors---<loubts (about him), love
for her daughter, embarrassment at being without a
penny of her own. Of course the daughter had a good
income. But the son-in-law wanted very much to buy
her coats, dresses, hats, purses, tickets, excursions,
dinners,music, airline tickets. Then he would note her
level look. She was wondering quietly about him. What
sort of man is Albert-what is his quality? When he
and Minna returned to their tight, small,neat Durrants
room after breakfast, he said, "Here's a hundred
pounds. Buy the old girl some kid gloves. Take her to
Bond Street." Minna laughed at him.
Then he made an independent discovery, one it was
impossible for Minna to make.
Minna,you see,had her astrophysical,mathematical
preoccupations. Minna, in Corde's metaphor, was
bringing together a needle from one end of the universe
with a thread from the opposite end. Once this was
accomplished,Corde couldn't say what there was to be
sewn-this was his own way of concentrating his mind
on the mysterium tremendum. Face it, the cosmos was
beyond him. His own special ability was to put together
for the general reader such pieces as this one from
Harper's. Its topics (in Minna's schoolgirl room, he
turned the pages) were the torments and wildness of
black prisoners under the jurisdiction of the disabled
16 SAUL BELLOW
sheriff of Cook County, who had himself broken his
neck in a patriotic street brawl with rampaging Weath
ermen in the Loop, when he missed a flying tackle;
and . .. no, there the Dean checked it, cooled it. He
would stop with his ability to describe a scene for the
common reader; or to deal with undergraduates-he
did that fairly well, too. Or with his more important
ability to engage (inexplicably) the affections of a
woman like his wife, who had chosen him to share her
planetary life. (Forgiving him his defects,his sins. But
she would never regret it.) The county sheriff who
campaigned from his wheelchair was, for the moment,
set aside.
Corde's discovery in London was that Valeria no
longer had the strength to travel, to fly back and forth.
She was too old. The diagnosis was sudden but it was
complete. "She can't hack it." She was sick, she
doctored herself {he had seen pill bottles when she
opened her pocketbook). Pushing eighty, she flew to
England. Unless Minna formally renounced her Ruma
nian citizenship, she couldn't go to see her mother. It
might not be safe. Hard to say why Minna balked at this
formal renunciation. She found excuses. "I can't stand
those people. I can't bear to correspond with them.
Yes, I will go through with it.I've already got the forms
filled in. " True, she concentrated mostly on her sci
ence, couldn't be bothered with government papers,
but that was a superficial explanation, considering the
strength of her feeling for Valeria. But she preferred to
assume that her mother was strong and well. That
Valeria should be too sick to go abroad was inadmissi
ble. As for Valeria, she would rather die in an airport
than tell her daughter, "My dear, I'm too weak for
suitcases,and I can't manage taxis, and I can't stand in
line for customs,I'm too old for the jets." No,she came
to London, her head full of lists--and every day she
told Minna, "I have to bring dress material for Floara. I
promised to get computer manuals for Ionel." And so
with boots for Doina, tea from Fortnum's for Gigi. For
herself she bought colored postcards of Westminster

Abbey.
Corde was called upstairs to strap her boxy rawhide
valises. To squeeze them shut took some doing. How
did the old woman manage to haul these two fat
trunks?-they were almost trunks.
"It must take plenty of wangling to get these damn
things through customs."
"She's got what it takes," said Minna. She shrugged.
She had to read a paper before a scientific meeting in
Copenhagen,and for two days Con�e was in charge of
Valeria.He entertained her at the Etoile on Charlotte
Street. She loved the Etoile. He took her to a Rowland
son exhibition at Burlington House. That meant stand
ing in a queue outside, and then making your way
through crowded halls. The old woman smiled calmly
at the stout,rosy,frilling ladies of fashion, at the fops,
but Corde soon saw that the outing was too much for
her. Strange to watch,troubling. He was upset for her.
She couldn't keep her balance; she was tipping, listing,
seemed unable to coordinate the movements of her
feet. He said, "I've had enough Rowlandson, do you
mind?" As he led her down the large staircase, the
lightness and the largeness of her elbow surprised him.
Why was the joint so big? It felt like dry sponge.She
removed his hand. They emerged in the Piccadilly jam
of vehicles and people. She said,"You have things to
do,Albert. I'm going back to the hotel." He doubted
even that she could hail a cab. He flagged one down
and got in with her, saying, "I left my appointment
book at the hotel; I don't remember where I'm sup
posed to go next. " She made a place for him on the
buttoned black leather seat and sat in the corner silent,
even severe.
Corde's father had been an old-fashioned American,
comfortable, calm,a "Pullman car type," his son called
him. (The old guy had been a sort of playboy too, a
man about town,but that was something else again.)
Co�e could reproduce his manner. That obtuse style
18 SAUL BELLOW
was helpful now. He gave Valeria no sign that he had
found her out.When he took her that night to a Turkish
dinner in Wardour Street, she seemed stronger, she
said how pleasant London was; she talked Communist
politics, reminisced about Ana Pauker, in whose gov
ernment she had served.He told her a little about life
in Chicago. With red meat and a bottle of wine, she
picked up somewhat. She said she had been tired that
afternoon. Between three o'clock and five the body ran
out of blood sugar.
"Yes, I go into an afternoon slump myself. Often. "
But he said quietly to Minna when they had seen
Valeria off at Heathrow, "Did the old girl say how good
a time she had? I don't think she can make the trip
again."
"You're not serious.Her only pleasure is coming out.
These holidays in a civilized place. And seeing us. She
lives for it. "
He did not pursue the subject. He had gone on
record. Minna would have to follow up in her own way.
It was an instinct with Corde-maybe it was a weakness

-always to fix attention on certain particulars, in every
situation to grasp the details. If he took Valeria to dine
at the Etoile, he brought away with him a clear picture
of the wine waiter. That a bald man had triple creases
at the back of his skull could not be left out of account,
nor could the shape of his thumbs, the health of his
face, the spread of his nose, the strength of his stout
Italian body in the waiter's suit. Corde's eyes took in
also the dishes on the hors d'oeuvre cart, the slices of

champignons a Ia Grecque, the brown sauce, the
pattern of the table silver. With him,exclusively mental
acts seldom occurred. He was temperamentally an
image man. To observe so much was not practical,
sometimes it was disabling, often downright painful,
but actualities could not be left out.
So when he left Chicago, it had to be remembered
that he packed his dusty black zippered garment bag.
As he carried it, it rubbed against his leg with a
slithering sound (the synthetic material expressing it
self). In the bag, his undistinguished clothing-shirts
spotted and scorched in the hand laundry, trousers that
should have gone to the cleaner (he could shut his eyes
and locate those spots exactly). Another item: in the
fever of departure, he saw the floating ice blocks in
Lake Michigan, gray-white and tan, the top layer of
snow stained with sand blown from the beaches by the
prevailing wind. Item: the red thermal undershirt he
removed from his luggage because he imagined that
Bucharest would be a Mediterranean sort of place, a
light city not a heavy one; rococo. Rococo! It was mass
after mass of socialist tenements and government office
buildings. Now he regretted that thermal shirt. Item:
the tube of salve he needed for the rash about his
ankles was squeezed dry, rolled up to the neck-he
should have ordered another before leaving. Item: his
pots of African violets.What good would it do to let the
rods of ultra-violet light bum on? A crisis--how to save
his plants! He had heard that if you put one end of a
rope in a bucket of water, the other end would deliver
sufficient moisture, but there was no time to set this up.
Item: the can of Earl Grey tea on the kitchen counter,
and the bananas. He took those with him to Europe.
Essential documents were left on his desk. He hadn't
been able to find his address book; he had most likely
hidden it- from himself. He wouldn't be writing letters
anyway. His instinct was to cut, to drop everything and
fty away unencumbered. It was only the violets he
20 SAUL BELLOW
regretted leaving. Item: Minna packed her valise with
astronomical papers, giving them priority over dresses.
On the trip she couldn't be separated from these books
and reprints. They weren't checked through but had to
be carried as cabin luggage. Her eyes seemed to have
been displaced by stress; they looked like the fruit in an
eccentric still life. As soon as Gigi's wire came she
stopped eating. In a matter of hours she was looking
gaunt, and sallow; her face had a kind o( negative
color. Her underlip was retracted, and her chin filled
with pressure marks. Corde was a close watcher of his
wife. Item: the cab to the airport ran between levees of
snow. Winter's first blizzard had struck Chicago. The
cab was overheated and stank of excrement. Of dogs?
Of people? It was torrid, also freezing; Arctic and
Sahara, mixed. Also, the driver was sloshed with eau
de cologne. The ribbed rubber floor was all filth and
grit. Corde said, "People have even stopped wiping
themselves." He took the precaution of saying this in
French, and there was something false about that
raunchy gaiety (and disgust) in a foreign language.
Anyhow it fell flat, as Minna scarcely heard him.
More items were checked on the way to O'Hare.The
alarm system? The keys? The windows? Instructions to
the super to remove the mail from the box, the
newspapers from the front door? Had he gone to the
bank for dollars? Talked to de Prima, the lawyer? Left
Valeria's telephone number with Miss Parson at the
office? The college might need to reach them. Minna
was thinking not of the Dean's special problems but of
the time reserved for her on the telescope at Mount
Palomar.She had been due there Christmas week, but
that was now canceled, of course. "Yes, they know
where to find us," he said. With his dense eyebrows,
the plain length of his mouth, his low voice, his usual
posture was one of composure, and now and then
students told him that it was wonderful how "laid back"
he was. A handsome compliment but undeserved. He
was engaged in a sharp rearguard action against the
The Dean 's December 21
forces of agitation. When they took off from O'Hare,
he felt that all the Chicago perplexities were injected
into his nerves. Yet when he went into the lavatory of
the Lufthansa 747 and the tight went on, he seemed
well enough to himself, with a mouth like a simple
declarative sentence, although there were so many
complex-compound things to be said.
Then, after making an air loop of thousands of miles,
he found himself stuck. But alien as they were, his
surroundings offered him intimacy, the instant intimacy
of Minna's old room. For much of the day he lounged
among Rumanian cushions on a divan, drinking peas
ant brandy and eating grapes, brownish green and
heavy on the seeds, brought from the country by Tanti
Gigi's far-flung agents. Because Gigi's heart was irregu
lar, she was in bed much of the time, but women were
coming and going all day, reporting to her, taking
instructions. Corde was on her mind. He could drink
only real coffee and, deprived of whiskey, he needed
palinca, at least. He was used to having meat (meat was
virtually unobtainable), and a bottle of wine with it
(you could get inferior wine on the black market). He
had sacrificed his comforts to bring Minna here, and
Gigi was therefore determined that he should have the
best. ("What a rich, wonderful country we are," she
said. "If only you could see the real Rumania.")
Despite doorbells and telephones, conferences, de
spite the developing struggle with the Colonel, despite
the weight of a large totalitarian mass of life on the
)
outside (the city was terrible! , he was quiet. No urgent
calls, decisions, no hateful letters, no awkward confer
ences, infighting, or backbiting-people getting at him
one way or another. After lunch he took off his
clothing, pulled back the heavy gaudy bed cover (al
most a rug) and went to sleep. Sometimes he did that
after breakfast, too. He did not feel quite steady even
in brilliant healthful weather; consciousness reeling as
if he had been driving a car over endless plains and
whole continents. He was eye-sick, head-sick, seat-sick,
22 SAUL BELLOW
'
motion-sick, gut-sick, wheel-weary. So he rested after
breakfast. The nights were not easy. Minna wasn't
sleeping.She seemed to lie there rerunning in her mind
all the worst sequences of the day. To these were added
thoughts for which there hadn't been sufficient time.
The room was cold, the nights unnaturally black-or
was this Corde's own intensity working outward, black
er than night. He put out his fingers and fetched the
covers over his bony shoulders, but when he heard
Minna stirring he knew that he must get up and offer
her comfort. Lying down with her usually helped. But
not now.
She didn't turn when he entered her small bed and
put his arms around her from behind. They held a
whispered conversation.
Minna said, "What does she think?Days go by and
I'm not there."
"What, she? She can't open her eyes, and in that
room you couldn't tell days from nights anyway
besides, she understands why you're not there. "
"Does she?"
"Are you kidding?With her experience?Inside the
government?And/or private life? They've been under
the Russians since 1945. That's a long, long time. She's
got to know every wrinkle.You can be sure she tho�ght
it through even before we arrived. "
"Yes, that may be. "
He lowered his voice still more. "Even after a few
days you feel them sitting on your face. And at this rate
we may be looking at our own future."
"You shouldn't say that. . . ."
"It's not me that says it. I don't believe it, but it's
what you hear and see. You should read what they say
on the Russian New Right. Like, it's the weak democ
racies that produce dictatorships. Or that our deca
dence is heading full speed towards collapse. Of course,
they overdo it.But you can't help thinking about it."
Minna let him go on, and he stopped himself. It
wasn't exactly the time to develop such views. Evil
visions. The moronic inferno. He read too many arti
cles and books.If the night hadn't been so black and
cold, none of this would have been said. The night
made you exaggerate. Between them on the pillow was
the float of her hair.
"They want to do a tracheotomy, " she said.
"Do they have to?"
"Dr.Moldovanu said on the telephone that it had to
be done.He also told me that he wrote a report to the
Colonel about the visits. He suggested they were good
for my mother."
"They're all afraid of that bastard. He scares them to
death. "
"Ileana told me that when Dr. Moldovanu's mother
had an infarct, he wasn't allowed to bring her to the
Party hospital. The request was refused."
"They call it an infarct here?There might be a way to
go over the man's head, if this were Chicago or
Honduras, or some such place."
"How can he not allow me .. . ! "
It was Corde's habit to explain matters to his un
worldly wife. It gave him pleasure and was sometimes
instructive even to himself. "This gives the man an
opportunity to test the efficiency of his controls. This is
fine tuning, " said Corde. "Yesterday I sent a note to a
guy at the American embassy."
"Did you?"
"I asked Gigi to have it delivered for me. It's only a
couple of blocks, she said. You see, just before we left
Chicago I phoned my old friend Walter, in Washington,
and explained where we were going, told him about
this. He got back to me with some names here
contacts. I don't expect great results, but I did tell this
guy in the information branch I wanted to visit him."
"Could he do us any good?"
"It's worth a try. I might suggest he ask the State
Department to put in its oar. "
"No! Do you think they might . . . ?"
"There's an election coming, and this would be one
24 SAUL BELLOW
of those humane Christian things from the White
House. Make good copy."
"Do they do such things?"
"Those people are sweet, and mostly air, like
Nabisco wafers. Still, I did ask Walter to get to the right
desk in the State Department. I've been worried all
along about your dual citizenship. "
"I should have attended to that long ago." She
changed the subject. In science she was scientific; in
other matters her methods were more magical, Corde
believed. By giving up the dual citizenship, she would
be admitting her mother's mortality, and that in itself
might have weakened the old woman. That kind of
primitive reasoning.
"Tanti Gigi wants me to get in touch with Dr.
Gberea," she said.
"Gherea?"
"You remember who he is? You don't remember."
"Yes, I do. I do so. Your father's pupil, the one he
trained in brain surgery."
"That's the man. He's the big neurosurgeon here,
practically the only one. My father made him. After my
father died he became a big shot."
"Is he good?"
"They say he's a genius."
"We'll have to think about it."
Her schoolgirl bed was too narrow for them both,
and he returned to the divan. Several times during the
night he got up to stroke her head or kiss her on the
shoulders. These remedies had always given Corde a
sense of useful power, but they were ineffectual now.
The night pangs were too bad. He had them himself.
He listened to Minna's breathing. She appeared to hold
her breath. He waited, listening until she exhaled. He
said at last, "Let's get out the bottle and have a shot or
two. No use lying here like dummies." He switched on
the light. They sat side by side in their coats, drinking
plum brandy. The stuff was slightly oily and rank, but
went down smooth and warm. Then up came the
fermented fumes.
"It won't be easy to approach Gherea. "
"Why not?" said Corde. "Don't you know him?"
"Thirty years ago he was like one of the family. But
he's turned into a savage ."
"In what way savage?"
"He knocks people down--assistants, anesthetists,
nurses. He even hits his colleagues , doesn't give a damn
for anybody. They have to take it from him. He
punches and kicks them if they hand him the wrong
instrument. And he won't operate without money.
'You don't give me five hundred thousand lei, I don't
remove your brain tumor. "'
"A brute. You don't have to tell me about brutes.
And the only game in town. "
"That's it, Albert. Even the dictator's son, when he
had a skull fracture and they brought him to Gherea ,
they say Gherea had him put in bed with another
patient. "
"Are they two to a bed here? "
"In lots of hospitals they are.This was Gherea's way
of pointing out to him that he had to spend more on
hospitals. "
"So even the dictator has to put up with him. And
what does Gherea do with the dough he squeezes from
people-does he live it up?"
"I guess he must. But I don't see how-he never
leaves the country. How do you live it up here? He
doesn't have a second language. Maybe Russian. I
think he comes from Bessarabia. He never goes
abroad. "
" . . . Pictures, music?"
"They say he has no use for such stuff. "
"Just himself and his knives and saws? Him and
death? Only interested in the basic facts?What about
sex?"
"That's just it; he has a lady friend and I happen to
26 SAUL BELLOW
know her.I met the woman in Zurich eight or ten years
ago. She's very decent, divorced. They're together. "
"And you want her to persuade him to examine
Valeria? "
"What's your picture of Gherea?"
"Your people had class, and he was a boor. They
took him up because he had a knack for surgery. He
despised them. Thought it was idiotic that with all their
advantages they should be Communists. A peasant
mentality. He concentrated on learning the Cushing
techniques from your father, and then to hell with
him. "
"That's about right, " said Minna. Corde's speed in
making connections never failed to please her. She
counted on him to spell things out.
"Sure, I see him.He's the tough glory type who goes
into people's heads with his tools and his fingers. The
brain has got to be hell to work in. Save 'em or kill 'em.
Hates sentiment, dramatizes himself as a beast . . .
maybe there's a peasant mother who still pines for him
out in the bush. He never sees her. There's only this
devoted woman with access to his softer side."
"I'm going to talk to her. Tanti Gigi got the number
for me. "
"Can't hurt. "
"You think I should? "
"Of course. Let Gherea look at the X-rays. "
The X-rays would show a cloud over the brain of the
sort Corde had once seen on a film. A smart micro
photographer had managed to insert a tiny lens into the
carotid artery and push it up to the skull, capturing a
cerebral hemorrhage on his camera. What you saw was
the blood beginning to fizz out. At first it wavered in a
thick, black, woolly skein. Then it suddenly filled in,
thickened, a black rush, the picture of death itself. The
memory of this television documentary was something
Corde preferred to avoid.
He thought, Sure, let Minna get this surgeon charac
ter to look at the clot, make his gesture. It won't do any
good. But let her put up a fight. Valeria fought for her.
Minna when she was brought back to earth could be a
tigress. He had seen that. Fighting was quite unrealis
tic,of course. Under the circumstances it would get her
nowhere. The Colonel had them all in chancery, like
John L. Sullivan. But it was necessary emotionally to
do battle.
Corde had heard anecdotes about Valeria's dignified
refusal to rejoin the Party after she was "forgiven. " She
told the Central Committee that she had loved her late
husband , and that if he had been unfaithful she would
have loved him still but she would never have taken
him back. In matters of self-respect she was the model
for her daughter, her sister and all the ladies of her
circle. Had she made serious trouble, it would have
been easy enough for the regime to put her away, but
this would have upset many old academicians and
physicians and educators of her own dying generation.
Why stir up the codgers? Besides, she had been a
sensible old character, and circumspect, and knew
exactly how far she could go, so they were letting her
die in the best of their hospitals. But they weren't about
to be agreeable to the daughter. The daughter carne
flying in from the U.S.trailing her streamers of scientif
ic prestige, arriving with this dean of hers and demand
ing special treatment. She had forgotten how things
were here. Maybe she had never known. They would
give the daughter a few lumps. This was the score, as
her brooding husband saw it. Naive Gigi considered
herself to be next in line and came forward to carry on
in her fallen sister's place. She was protecting Minna,
too, as Valeria had done. All these fighters. Corde
reviewed the situation as though he were browsing over
it, but his conclusions were sharp enough. The ladies
were getting nowhere. They couldn't get anywhere.
But they were bound to try. He would try too.
"Let's drink up and get some sleep, " he said.
"You haven't heard from Chicago?" she said. "Noth
ing from Miss Porson?"
28 SAUL BELLOW
"Not yet. "
"Not from Vlada, or from Sam Beech?"
Minna took an interest in the Beech project. Beech
was a colleague at the college, a celebrated, a notable,
a pure scientist, very high in the pantheon, who had
asked the Dean for help in putting some of his ideas
before the general public.Vlada was a Serbian friend of
Minna's. They had been at Harvard graduate school
together.Lifelong students, both of them. Minna's old
lycee was nearby. You might see the shape of it up the
street even now if you could bear to open the door to
the stucco porch (it couldn't be much colder than the
room). That lycee had specialized in the "hard " disci
plines, apparently. Behind the iron curtain, histor y and
literature were phony subjects, but mathematics and
the physical sciences were incorruptible.
Vlada was a member of Beech's research group, the
famous geologist's chief chemist. In Minna's view the
planet was a far better subject than slums, crimes and
prisons.Why bother with that sort of thing if you could
write instead about a geophysicist like Beech? She
confessed she couldn't understand why the Harper's
articles had disturbed so many people. What was in
them?Corde had watched her rattle through the glossy
pages, impatient, trying to do right by him. He doubted
that she had read them. She admitted that she found
the language hard, the spin he gave words was odd. She
was told that the Dean was a journalist of unusual
talent.That was good enough for her. The Dean said,
"Don't you believe it. There is no such thing.That's
just the way journalists pump, promote, gild and
bedizen themselves, and build up their profession,
which is basically a bad profession." The Cordes had a
language proble m. When he let himself go she didn't
understand what he was saying.(What was bedizen?) In
all essentials, of course , he was perfectly straight with
her, an erratic person , a strange talker, but a secure
husband-a crystallized, not an accidental husband.
It meant a lot to her that Corde was approached by
Professor Beech after the first of his two articles in
Harper's. The collaboration was Beech's idea. Corde
then said to Minna, "You think this is the greatest,
don't you? You look as if you just swallowed a double
dose of delight." Yes, she was extremely pleased.
Beech , you see, was a scientist.A joint article, when it
was published, would remove Corde from the uproar
he had somehow stirred up. "You think some of his
class will rub off on me, " said Corde.
When he understood what Beech was really after, he
said that he might be willing to do the job. "Not so
innocuous , either , " he said to Minna , but she was too
pleased to take this in.
Vlada herself was flying over from Chicago and was
expected at Christmas. She had an only brother in
Rumania whom she visited every year.
"If she actually does come, " said Minna (there were
often arbitrary delays over visas) , "she'll bring a bundle
of stuff for us from home.A mixed blessing. Bad as it is
here, it's just as well for you to be away from Chicago. "
"Yes, " he said. "Quite a string of lesser evils. "
"At least you haven't got that kid on your back. "
He decided not to reply. He only said, "Better have
some sleep . Drink up. I can always sack out for an
hour , but you're on your feet all day. "
The kid, Mason Zaehner , was the Dean's only nephew ,

the son of his widowed sister, Elfrida. Mason was a
dropout, still connected with the college but drifting
about the city.For a while he had taken special courses
30 SAUL B ELLOW
in computer science. Those were only a cover,
apparently-but for what?More recently he had been a
busboy; and in the kitchen of the delicatessen
restaurant that employed him, he became intimate with
a black dishwasher, a parolee. Corde had seen this
man's rap sheet. His crimes were the familiar ones
theft , possession of stolen property , et cetera. He was
now charged with homicide. The young man he was
accused of killing was a student, Rickie Lester. The
Dean himself had had to identify the body. This was
unusual, but it was August; the college's top security
man was up in Eagle River, everybody was out of town.
It was Corde's impression that the young man's wife,
Lydia, was under sedation.
So the cops rang the Dean and at four o'clock in the
morning called for him in their blue-and-white car. It
was a rotten night. The air was heavy with the smell of
malting grain from the kilns of Falstaff beer, near
Calumet Harbor. This was better than the hot sulfur
and sewer gases vented by U.S. Steel. That acid stink
made you get out of bed to shut the windows. Through
an ectoplasmic darkness-night was lifting-the Dean
rode to the hospital. There he viewed the murdered
boy.
Rick Lester's face had the subtracted look of the just
dead . He had crashed through the window of his own
third-floor apartment, and his skull was broken on the
cement.His longish hair was damp (with blood?) and
hung backwards. His slender feet were dirty.The cops
said he had gone out barefoot earlier in the night.
Making the rounds of the bars , he had driven his car
without shoes. Many young people removed their shoes
in hot weather-as if they were surrounded by woods
and fields, not these broken-bottle, dog-fouled streets.
What did these charmed-life children think Chicago
was? The expression on Rick Lester's face suggested
that he would have given up this sort of caper if he had
lived. The folds of his mouth , his settled chin, gave him
a long white mature look of dignity. More adult , more
horsey, a different kind o f human being altogether.
Corde was inclined to think that his hurry-up death had
taught him something. Since he had been subtracted
once and for all from the active human sum . you could
only try to guess when that lesson had been given.
Illumination while falling? A ten-second review of his
life?
An experienced man and far from young, Corde had
not expected to feel this death so much. He couldn't see
why. His feelings took him by surprise. Something
seemed to be working its way upward , treading on his
stomach and his guts. The pressure on his heart was
especially heavy, unpleasantly hot and repulsively
melting. He had no use for such sensations; he certainly
didn't want the kid's death bristling over him like this.
He had seen plenty of corpses. This one got to him ,
though. Corde believed that it was the evil that had
overtaken the boy that did it. For he was a boy, with
those slender feet curling apart. Corde didn't know him
well enough to weep for him. So perhaps it wasn't the
boy, entirely, but some other influence . After the
identification was made and the face covered again,
Corde's revulsion-depression , or whatever it was, took
a different tum. He was unwilling to let the administra
tion take over and follow its usual pattern, depending
upon the homicide police , who would investigate at
their own pace. It was beyond him to explain why he
became so active in this case. He had had to handle
student deaths before , mostly suicides, and to deal with
parents. He wasn't particularly good at this, never
saying what people expected of him although he chose
his words with care. His pallor and the dish face and
deep voice were not effectively combined into a man
ner. He wanted to say what he meant sensibly or
warmly, but he was so unsuccessful with horrified
families that he horrified himself-"! can't make sense
of this senseless death ," was what he tacitly confessed
-and the odd phrases that came out only puzzled
grieving parents and probably depressed them further.
32 SAUL BELLOW
What had happened? As yet the cops had little to
say. They told the Dean that Rick Lester had gone out
on the town that night. His wife was with him for a
while, but he took her home and then was too restless
to stay put. At two in the morning he turned up in a bar
they described as flaky. There "he made a pest of
himself, acted up, just about the only white person in
the place , making sex signals, according to the bartend
er." The cops rumbled on, doing their heavy minimum
for this dean . It wasn't so much that they were cynical ,
but their big-city-homicide outlook was summed up in
the thickness of their cheeks and bodies more than by
their words. The words were only a kind of stuffing.
Maybe this boy had hot pants, or drank more than he
could hold, or was freaked out on Quaaludes. Blood
tests would tell. He may have known the party or
parties who pushed him from the window. But al
though they sounded knowledgeable , the professional
work of the cops wasn't too good . They moved slowly,
indifferent. The mobile crime lab didn't do its job. And
then it turned out that the coroner's report was incom
plete. It all became worse, not better, as summer
ended . The undertaker didn't do what he was supposed
to do. The young wife broke down . Then she said that
she must go away for a while at least.
One of the homicide cops had advised Corde to post
a reward , and Corde moved quickly to find the money.
He had run into trouble with the Provost about this.
They had never had trouble before. The Provost, Alec
Witt, was generally cooperative, and Corde had had a
good opinion of him; but Witt seemed to think that
Corde was moving too fast. This smooth man , Witt,
whose manner was ultraconsiderate and solicitous , all
mildness, wondered whether the college might not be
well advised to keep a low profile. There was a tricky
racial angle to the case , and no telling what disagree
able facts digging might bring out. But Corde persisted.
He had in his hand a list of funds from which money
could be taken. It was available , all right. He kept
bringing forward his wide head, sinking it so that the
glasses slipped away from his eyes and from his light
haired , dense joined brows. He was low-keyed but
refused to accept a refusal. The college could afford it ,
should do it. The Provost began to think the man would
resign if he couldn't have his way. Corde had gotten his
back up. For what reason? That the shrewd Provost
could not make out. He smiled one of his not-quite
pleasant smiles of understanding gentleness, but he was
a rough Chicago man; his neck, his chest , told you that,
not big but brutal, definitely---c harging linebacker's
strength packed into those muscles. Corde had never
had occasion to take this in before. The physical
Provost was revealed to him today. "I guess I can come
up with a few thousand bucks if you absolutely have to
offer money ," Witt said at last.
"That's what it takes to get the information; the cops
are definite about it," Corde said.
As soon as the reward was announced, witnesses
came forward, sure enough , and within twenty-four
hours two suspects were arrested on their evidence.
One of these was Lucas Ebry, Mason's friend, and the
other a prostitute with a long criminal record. After
this, the case developed quickly. Student reaction was
also quick. That was Mason's doing. Immediately, he
organized something; Corde couldn't tell you what that
something was--a resistance movement , a defense
campaign. The radical student line was that the college
waged a secret war against blacks and that the Dean
was scheming with the prosecution, using the college's
clout to nail the black man. Resolutions were passed
and published in the student daily, which took up the
case in a big way.
Mason argued that there had been no murder. Rick
Lester hadn't been pushed from the window, he had
stumbled, he fell. Anyway, it was all his fault, he went
out that night looking for trouble , had been asking for
it. Campus militants developed the ideological aspects
of the case-the college was trying to restrict black
34 SAUL BELLOW
housing in the neighborhood , it refused to divest itself
of South African investments, it was slow on Affinn a
tive Action. Himself a campus radical forty years ago,
the Dean saw how little things had changed . The same
meetings, agitprop slogans, fanaticism , pressure meth
ods the same. The Provost said , "This will die down by
and by ; it always does . " What he really meant was,
"See what you've stirred up." Corde's head came
forward silently. His sober nod conceded nothing. He
had Witt's number now-not that he knew what to do
with it.
Mason had the nerve to drop in on his uncle. From
her anteroom Corde's secretary, Miss Porson, said
discreetly on the telephone-she was Corde's ally, but
she loved the excitement, to<r-"Your nephew has just
stopped by ; wants a few minutes of your time. "
"Tell him you're squeezing him i n between appoint
ments," said Corde .
His door was already opening, and there was his
nephew, busy-minded, scheming Mason, in the usual
youth drag-the worn narrow jeans, sprigged shirt,
ponytail. What to make of Mason ! Corde had always
disliked puzzles and people who contrived to puzzle
you. Did he dislike his nephew? No, but his feelings
towards him were terribly mixed . Skinny, lanky, am
bling, with pointed elbows , Mason gave himself graces,
seemed even to fancy that there was a valuable kind of
fragrance coming from him. What were his views? He
was sometimes seen with the Workers' World Interna
tional Marxist-Leninists, the ones who carried small
red flags as they peddled their papers in the streets, but
he wasn't one of them. A definite ideology would have
made him easier to deal with, and Mason didn't intend
to make anything easy. No, Corde couldn't identify the
young man's position, if he had a position. Maybe there
wasn't really any.
Mason came in with a light, bright Huckleberry Finn
air. It made the Dean heavy-hearted. Behind the
lightness there was supposed to be something danger-
ous, equivocal, what-have-you. Corde silently asked
(and it was as much a prayer as a question), Must we go
through this? Well, yes, we must. Accepting, he settled
back in the Dean's chair and crossed his arms, his
ankles. Leaning somewhat to the side , he composed
himself. He said , "I've got somebody coming any
minute, but sit down."
Mason when he sat was about as graceful as a driller's
rig-a long frame, a remote head. You could see it
going up and down rhythmically in a field of similar
rigs. In time the boy would fill out, certainly, and the
added weight might reduce his nervous intensity. His
father had been bearish in build, anything but a ner
vous type. Mason senior , a high-powered Loop lawyer
with connections in the Daley machine , had been
tough, arrogant, a bulldozing type. Brutal people,
those Chicago insiders , a special breed.Mason hadn't
inherited his father's bulk-not yet . What had he
inherited from him?
His nephew , as Corde saw him, was at an uncomfort
able stage of development. Uncomfortable? Bright ,
light, he was also bristling, writhing. The young racket
wasn't doing him a bit of good . Well, the field was ver y
crowded ; he was one of global millions. How to rise
above the rest, grab the lead-that was the challenge,
and he hadn't yet figured out how this was to be done.
Hence the equivocal menace, a sort of announcement:
"Watch this space." Corde looked down on these
crowded fields packed with contenders; he was pre
pared to admit that. He was prepared to admit quite a
lot about himself. For instance , you would not need to
press hard to get him to concede that his patient air was
only assumed , a pis aller and a burden. But it would
have been a terrible mistake to try to discuss things with
Mason frankly, or (still worse) on a theoretical level:
youth, age, mass tendencies, self-presentation, dema
gogy. Corde had observed to Minna not long ago that
although people talked to themselves all the time,
never stopped communing with themselves, nobody
36 SAUL B ELLOW
had a good connection or knew what racket he was
in-his real racket. Did Corde actually know?For most
of his life he had had a bad connection himself. There
was just a chance , however, that he might , at last, be
headed in the right direction. Just a chance. He would
have liked to tell his nephew that men and women were
shadows, and shadows within shadows, to one another.
Given encouragement, Corde would have liked being
kindly, candid, affectionate, but Mason gave no en
couragement, wasn't buying any kindly candor, and
Corde was careful with him, never uncled him, never
lectured. He was glad enough, de minimis (Mason
senior used to say de minimis; he was fond of kidding
growling-in Latin), to make plain sense. Given the
intricacy of these shadow-framed shadows, plain sense
was plenty.
Corde was put off by puzzles, and here was Mason
bent on puzzling him, and smiling at his uncle.It wasn't
much of a smile.Mason's lips were set high across his
face, they were puffy, they swelled, and between them
were his ingenuous front teeth. His mother had darker
coloring. Mason's hair was fair and brassy.Youthfully
vital, it seemed also to have a mineral luster. In the
length of his profile and the narrowness of his forehead,
he resembled Elfrida. Corde was strongly attached to
his sister, he loved her, so it was all the more painful to
see the same features adapted to-wel!, to mischief,
contrariness, contemporary expressions of face badly
interpreted. This was tough luck-a pity. The pity took
hold of Corde. It dragged his heart with sorrow-the
skinny, ill-assembled, innerly weak kid taking the field
against his uncle the Dean.But the sorrow was exces
sive, too. There was no call for heavy sorrow , it
dragged him in the wrong direction. Corde put a stop to
it.
The Dean's office was in a Brown Decade building.
They had tried to move him to new quarters, but he
fought that. The new rooms were too low, and the long
modern lighting tubes hurt his eyes. Also, he preferred
not to run into the Provost and other administrative
personnel in the corridors or the men's room. The
brownstone was more like his idea of a college building.
He was not exactly deanlike in appearance . He wore a
three-piece suit; the vest wasn't buttoned right some
how (no up-to-date official courting favor with under
graduates would dress in this style) . He was something
of a stand-in, a journalist passing for a dean. His wide
face , a sphere enlarged oy baldness , looked simple and
calm but also a little dusty, with an on-the-shelf effect.
There was something out of kilter in his look (the big
glasses? the eyes themselves?) . Long silky hairs at the
base of his throat didn't sort well with the three-piece
suit. The deep voice came from a man who after all
didn't look very strong-a misleading appearance ; he
was strong enough .
"What's with your mother?" he said.
" I haven't see much of her lately . . . sorry about
that. But how's your beautiful wife? I have to tell you,
you really got lucky with this one, Uncle Albert . "
Corde made n o answer. It was not possible to
misinterpret this silence . But Mason went on, "She's
not only very smart, she's also warm and cheerful.
You're livelier, too, with her. The other ladies must
have depressed you. That's just about impossible with
Minna. And she's got class. Mother loves her . "
"What's o n your mind, Mason?"
"You won't accept this as a social visit? You're busy?
I'm making trouble for you?"
"I assume it's trouble you want to discuss. "
" I wrote twice t o you about i t . You didn't answer . "
"There was n o way t o answer those muddled, boil-
ing, murky letters. "
"You could have asked me t o come i n and have a
talk."
"After you blasted me publicly , what was there to
talk about?"
"The real facts of the case . "
"I can tell you i n short order just how I see those
38 SAUL BELLOW
facts. A student is dead. I'm dean of students. I had to
take a hand in this. And I did. Two people were
arrested , indicted , charged with homicide. That j ust
about describes it. "
"You put up a reward for information. "
"Of course. "
"Witnesses bought and paid for. "
Corde absolutely refused to go along with this bright
bitterness , the barrels-of-fun line that Mason tried to
take with him. It was clearly rejected by his silence. He
lowered his eyes to the simple gilt border of his desk-a
straight line of stamped arabesques into which he
would have liked to read sanity and order.
Mason said , "I have a special interest, too. Lucas
Ebry is my friend. "
"How close a friend is he? "
"You're suggesting that black street people don't
have friendships? Especially with whites? Also, as soon
as a reward was posted, 'friends' of Ebry and Riggie
Hines came running with information? They wanted
the money. Sure. As if white people from the bungalow
belt wouldn't do the same for a buck. "
"No doubt about it, " said Corde.
"The blacks on food stamps, they're the underclass
that's what your sociologists around here call them.
They're hoping that drugs and killings and prison will
eliminate that lousy, trouble-making underclass."
"I'm not the sociologists. They're not my sociolo
gists."
"No, you're my Uncle Albert , telling me not to put
words in your mouth. Okay. But you're pushing for a
conviction. You've made up your mind to get this one
black man."
"Your friend Ebry is on trial for homicide. I didn't
indict him, and I won't be trying him. "
"You're buddy-buddy with all those Irish characters
out of Notre Dame, Loyola and the Machine, the
prosecutor, the State's Attorney's people. "
"Naturally, I've talked to them. "
Assume that there was nothing too rum to be true
could we say also that there was nobody too rum to be
liked? The Dean and his nephew were family and so
presumably liked or at least tried to like each other.
The Dean would have made the effort (it would have
been an effort) , but liking was not what Mason wanted.
He was here on a mature basis (to fight) , meanwhile
shuffling and grinning. His ultra-bright hey-presto look
was insolent. Yes , he had a cause . But mostly he was
eager to needle his uncle and he hoped�raved ,
longed-to drive his needle deep. He was here as a
representative of the street people but he intended also
to teach his ignorant uncle some lessons about Chica
go's social reality. He had earned the right to speak for
the oppressed because he and Lucas Ebry had worked
together in the grease and garbage of the kitchen, sweat
rags tied on their foreheads.
Mason was saying, "Week after week in that damn
sewer. That's not a relationship an outside person can
judge . "
"Petty bourgeois a n d white, you mean . "
"You said it . "
There had been the army-mess halls , KP-but it
would be foolish to bandy experiences with Mason .
Corde let this pass. He waited while the second hand of
the electric clock on the wall made one full cycle, like
the long-legged fly. Mason's message was clear: Lucas
Ebry was real, others (Uncle Albert, for instance) were
not. Uncle Albert had no business to be messing with
people who were wrapped up in an existence, in a
reality that was completely beyond him. For those
people the stakes were life and death. What did Uncle
Albert stake? Let him stick to his fancy higher
education-seminars in Plato and the Good. Those
people of the underclass, dopers or muggers or whores:
what were they, mice? To the "thinking population," to
establishment intellectuals , they were nothing but
mice ! Thus Corde spelled out, parsed, his nephew's
message . He even agreed , in part.
40 SAUL BELWW
"But what about the boy who was killed?" he said.
"Who says he was killed! "
"Let's not quibble over words. He died. . . ."
"But you can't prove he was killed. "
Steady in spite of the rise of unwanted anger, Corde
said, "He was tied and gagged. He didn't first gag and
then tie himself with strips from the drapes, did he?Or
cut himself-slash his own ear with the kitchen knife?
He went through the glass on the third floor with one of
his arms still tied tight and the gag in his mouth.Then
the police came . . . but what do we need to go over
this for?There's the testimony of Mrs. Lester and the
black woman. "
"Are you going to put that whore in front of a jury?
You never will. Her rap sheet goes back ten years.
She's plea-bargaining. Her evidence isn't worth a
damn. And the other lady, Lydia, what do you expect
her to say? She and her husband went out that night
looking for action. It was the kind of hot weather when
people get raunchy, and that's what Lester was. He
went to the bar and brought horne Lucas Ebry and this
black whore. Why do you think he did that?"
"Why do you think, if his wife was at home?''
"Lester went out twice, once with Lydia for a
beer-at least that's what she said-and again after she
went to bed. He took off alone in his car, no shoes on
his feet. He went to this other bar, which is all black ,
and he didn't know how to behave. He got on every
body's nerves. He was damn loud, dumb and offensive.
He tried to pick up Lucas Ebry and this black chick."
"It was they who picked him up. "
The conversation here became painful to Corde for
the motives it brought into question. He couldn't say
what Lester had been looking for that night. Whatever
the boy had done led, as if by prearranged stages, to his
destruction and it was not impossible that all those
wrong moves were made because they were wrong. An
event had picked him to happen to. The gates of death
were opening for the kid. Why shouldn't he himself
have had some sense of this?
"You think he was just being nice and friendly,"
Mason said.
Corde conceded, "What he did that night seems out
of character, but I don't believe it should have been
punishable by death. Nothing he deserved to die for . "
"I read what you said t o the press about him, that he
was a disciplined student and all that. He used to go to
early mass . "
" I didn't make i t up," said Corde. "Two priests paid
me a call. I didn't solicit the information. They told me
he was religious . Why couldn't he have been?"
"No comment," said Mason, but the expression that
worked about his mouth was nothing but comment. For
a moment he was tough and mature in the manner of
his late father, an artist in this sort of thing, an
overbearing rude man. The late Zaehner had just such
bulges in the lower cheek, and the identical bullying
lusterless put-down stare . And Mason was still very
young, only twenty-two . His brassy hair subsided on his
jaws, towards the chin, in light streaks of down. You
could almost see the pollen of adolescence over the
bridge of his nose . Why did he have to be so very tall?
His quiddity was overstretched .
"Whether h e was religious is neither here nor there.
His life was decently organized . He studied, worked ,
he was a married young man. "
"Yeah? Well, let's continue with what happened . He
acted like a loudmouth that night. He went up and
down the bar, and forced people to shake hands with
him. They could have cared less. A white student
saying he understood their life and was for them. Big
deal! They were turned off completely . "
"This sounds like Ebry-the 'turned off. ' "
"Never mind all the decent stuff," said Mason. "A
nice clean boy and an Eagle Scout? You weren't born a
dean, Uncle . Lester was as kinky as they come . "
42 SAUL BELLOW
"Well , get to the point."
"He picked up Ebry and this Riggie Hines at the bar,
and they went together to his apartment."
"That's from Ebry, too."
"Well, there were three people to begin with. One of
them is dead. One is plea-bargaining-lying. What
does that leave?"
Ebry, without bail money, was being held in County
Jail. Riggie Hines was in prison, too.
Mason said, "How did they get into the apartment if
Lester didn't invite them? So? Why did he?"
"For a sexual purpose? With his wife asleep? Why
would he bring two people there? . . . "
"Riggie Hines is as tough as they come, and all
whore. Ready for any damn thing. What's a white wife
to her? You've seen her yourself. She goes around in a
workshirt, wide open, and wears her jeans like a man.
She spits on the floor like a trucker; and if a guy didn't
pay her, she'd slug him. You don't bring home a broad
like that at three in the morning to discuss academic
subjects. She's a bad cunt."
Mason sketched all this for his uncle with an air of
"You tell me how it happened, if not this way," and
Corde had to agree that it wasn't easy to explain. It was
like trying to see through a barrier of vapor or gas.
Reconstruction was all the more problematic because
of the emotional heaviness of all the circumstances,
even time and weather. It had been one of those
choking, peak-of-summer, urban-nightmare, sexual
and obscene, running-bare times, and death panting
behind the young man, closing in. But the evidence
suggested that some unconscious choice had been
made, some mixture , an emulsion of silliness and doom
shaken up and running over. The younger generation
didn't seem to understand who the people around them
were, with whom they had to do.
Mason said, "He wanted Riggie Hines to go into the
toilet with him."
"What for?"
"To go down on him while she was shitting."
Corde rejected this, hated it. He said violently ,
"Don't come to m e with such talk. And you don't have
to unload this kind of thing on that dead kid. "
"Well , Uncle , I heard you saying to my mother once
that we were living through some kind of sexual
epidemic. You made quite a speech at the dinner table.
Maybe you weren't aware that I was there. It happened
about ten years ago, and I must have been about
twelve, but I remember what you said. A kind of
demon had ahold of us, was your idea. But here's an
illustration and you don't accept it. You want him to be
that dead kid, so nice, just an object of pity. "
"According to the police, there was a dog shut up in
the toilet . "
"It was Lester's dog. He could have taken him to the
kitchen."
"More Ebry. He's your one and only source. "
"The woman says the same. "
"I doubt that Lester had anything definite in mind ,"
said Corde. "There was a melon in the icebox. He was
going to entertain his visitors. He brought the melon
and a carving knife into the parlor. Ebry grabbed the
knife."
"That's not the way I heard it. That's Riggie's
plea-bargaining. She's plenty familiar with knives.
There's a stabbing on her rap sheet. Did she ever say
how many people she cut?No, why should she?"
"I suppose," said Corde, "if you could get into that
tight skull of hers you'd find it packed with grotesque
ideas, deeds or pictures. " It wasn't so much what he
said that made Mason stare at him; it was the odd but
characteristic lapse into abstruseness or into images by
which grieving parents were also put off when the Dean
was trying to console them.
"So he was just entertaining them with some nice
cantaloupe."
"They held the knife on him," said Corde. "I sup
pose he put up some resistance, so they cut his ear to
44 SAUL B ELLOW
prove they meant business. They tore strips from the
drapes and tied him up, they pushed I gag down his
throat, and then they started to burglarize the apart
ment, which was what they had come for-hi-fi, tape
recorder, earphones: those were stacked by the back
door. Riggie pulled off Rick Lester's gold wedding
band. That's in evidence , too, so we don't have to
quibble about it. All right. Then Ebry dropped the TV
set, and that woke up Mrs. Lester, and she came out in
her short summer nightie . Till then she hadn't heard
anything because of the noisy air conditioner in her
bedroom . When his wife came in, Lester began to
struggle. That's what seems to have happened . Riggie
held him down, while Ebry jumped at Mrs. Lester from
behind and forced her to the floor. "
"Yes," said Mason. "So what have you got? A white
woman, practically naked , and the black man on top of
her with the knife . The classic rape fantasy."
"There was no rape . "
"You bet not. What would he want that skinny broad
for? He had his choice of women. At the restaurant
they would come around to the kitchen and ask for
him , plenty of white ones. And furthermore, Ebry
wasn't the guy who was in Lester's apartment when the
hassle started. He got disgusted long before, because
Lester was patronizing the shit out of him . "
" S o h e said i n one o f his statements. It was two other
guys. Only Mrs. Lester picked him out in the lineup. "
"How could she identify him i f he was behind her?
But all right, I'll go along with your reconstruction,
Uncle. The husband saw the wife in her short nightie ,
on the floor, and he started to struggle. He got one arm
free , and he managed to hop to his feet ."
"Then he was pushed through the window, broke the
glass and fell three stories. One arm was still tied and
the gag was in his mouth . . . . "
"You really are hung up on that gag. Would it have
been more humane if he wasn't gagged, so he could
speak his last words? He fell, and he was killed. What
else is there?" Mason scowled as he smiled.
"So that's your summary . . . what he had in mind
was an orgy. Instead there was a fight, and if he was
killed he had death coming to him . "
"What d o you want to add? ' Appalled'? 'Aghast'?
'All shook up'?"
For Corde this was the worst moment of their
conversation . Strange interviews took place in a dean's
office, stranger than you might think possible. Students
who sought you out sometimes made curious requests
or confessions, or boasts. But this interview, with the
weight of his own family behind it, made his head ache,
sent a pang through his eyeballs. Depressed , the Dean
rose and opened the door to Miss Porson's outer office.
Was there a student waiting? There was no one. The
old girl's chair was empty. She was demonstratively
sympathetic, his ally-she made a big thing of that
plenty of flourishes-but her instinct was to take off
when the heat was on . She had gone to the ladies' room
to smoke a cigarette and gossip with the other girls. So
he was stuck with Mason. He saw no way to get rid of
him. He longed to say, "I don't feel well. Beat it. Come
back some other time." But that would have been
weak. This was serious. It was crime and punishment ,
life and death for Ebry. Corde was furious with Miss
Porson; gabby old bag, not worth a damn. But the real
trouble, as he recognized , was that he was in a wrong
relation to the sum of things-he himself. A sign of this
was that he was in a useless debate--hopeless! all the
premises were wrong-with this adolescent whose head
was so remote. As he went back to his seat, Mason
watched him.
The Dean understood only too well what the kid was
transmitting when he said, " 'Appalled'? 'All shook
up'?" He was saying, Let's not fuck around with all
these high sentiments and humane teachings and pieties
and poetry, and the rest of that jazz. You keep going
46 SAUL BELLOW
back to the knife and the gag and the blood and the
corpse and the prostrated wife , and you do it to stir
yourself with horror. Stones advertising how "human"
they are .
The truth o f this, even i f it was not more than a
particle, was a poisonous particle .
The true voice of Chicago-the spirit of the age
speaking from its lowest register; the very bottom.
For Mason was never more like his father than when
he thought he had you dead to rights. There were no
two ways about Mason senior; he was either for you or
against. If he didn't approve, then he despised you.
Corde had long ago decided that Chicago was the
contempt center of the U .S . A. And he heard the
contempt note in his nephew's voice-the true, buzz
ing, bullying, braying La Salle Street brass. "Hold their
feet to the fire ," Mason senior liked to say. Or, if it was
your own feet to the fire, "Got to bite the bullet ." He
chose to speak in platitudes ; but he interpreted them
powerfully, virile bruiser that he was. You were tough
or you were nothing. In realism and cunning these La
Salle Street characters were impressive because they
had the backing of the pragmatic culture of the city, the
state, the region, the country. In his brother-in-law's
view, the Dean had given up the real world to take
refuge with philosophy and art. Academics were hacks
and phonies. Old Mason could seem ponderously re
spectful , following polite protocol for liberals, but the
bottom line was this: he said , or growled , with nar
rowed eyes , " I make my living by tipping over garbage
cans, but at least I go in the alley and tip them over
myself. " Up in Lake Forest, Corde had been a subject
of jokes at the Zaehner dinner table: "the dud dean."
Elfrida didn't join in this fun, Corde was certain of
that. But she had married an extroverted, assertive
man , she preferred a husband who was altogether
different from her brother. Her brother, as she had
once told Corde, was strong-minded but at the same
time withdrawn, seemed to have a minimum of com-
mon ground with the people about him, and seldom
"gave out" except on paper.
Seated again , and facing Mason, the Dean felt
bleak-bleakest of all about himself. A gap had
opened. No, a vacuum. A vacuum was there. He said,
"Yes, when I looked at the boy's body in the morgue, it
shook me up." He might have added: This one time, I
was shaken.
Mason said, "I read the story in the Trib. The wife
was in shock, and Dean Albert Corde identified the
victim . . . . You probably swore you'd get the sons
ofbitches who did it."
"It's true I wanted them caught."
"You went to lots of trouble."
"It's also true that if they hadn't been found it would
have upset me."
"What makes you so sure you got the right party?
Okay, you made your own investigation. I know all
about it. You went to the restaurant where we worked.
You even went to see Toby Winthrop, that guy who
runs the detoxification center, about Ebry."
"As a matter of fact, we didn't discuss him."
"You're like a mastermind nemesis when you get
started. I bet if you had discussed him, Winthrop would
have put Ebry down. Winthrop is one of these glamor
ous black types, a fund-raising personality."
Corde said, "Now I want to tell you something,
Mason. I don't want you bothering Mrs. Lester. You
paid her a visit to warn her not to push the case. You
threatened that lots of ugly stuff would come out about
her husband. Stay away from her. She's a good young
woman."
"What does that mean, 'good young woman'?"
"It means that she has decent instincts. She feels, in
earnest."
"Jesus-Cheesus," said Mason.
The Dean now had a swelling, pulsating, exorbitant
headache. He had struck it rich this time. It was a
beauty, right through the eyes. If he had been alone he
48 SAUL BELLOW
would have gone to lie down. He kept an old aluminum
lawn chair in the corner. Miss Parson had knitted an
afghan for him. He often made use of this green and
blue afghan , took comfort from it.
"Furthermore, Mason, you've been spreading stories
on campus against the Lesters. No more of that, and
knock off the threats."
"Does the relationship embarrass you-nephew
against uncle?"
"It would surprise you how little that part of it affects
me."
"Oh, this is just hysterical kid stuff?"
Corde, with swelling headache, a great balloon, but
still patient, dropped his gaze to the desk. "Look, you
came to have it out with me and settle all kinds of
scores, put the whole mess on one square, like roulette.
God knows what-all. It's too bad . . . . "
To Mason this earnestness was simply a ploy, Uncle

Albert trying a softer approach. His smile said as
much.
Corde now made a super effort to be fair, to recon
sider. (Maybe he did have a blind spot.) He put his
imagination to work once more on the circumstances of
Rick Lester's death. For this purpose he had to absent
himself briefly. He turned his swivel chair away from
Mason and stared through the blue window and the
fringe of autumn ivy. Let's try again. Begin by setting
in place that boyish man's death. Begin with the crying
ugliness of the Chicago night. Put that in the center. It
had to be in the middle. Now then, who were the
people involved? There was a business connection
between Lucas Ebry and Riggie Hines. He pimped for
her, steered students to her room. This information was
from the cops. Very likely Mason knew it, too, if the
friendship was as close as he claimed. But he'd see no
special disgrace in pimping. It wasn't even pimping,
only procuring. Those kids had to get themselves laid.
So what? She didn't need Ebry's protection; she pro
tected herself.
She had the build of a boxer and a boxer's compact
tough head. Even the way she tucked back the mannish
shirt to show the tops of her breasts was pugilistic-this
must have worked sexually on the boy. Ebry! She could
floor Ebry with a punch. He was a shrunken, twisting
figure, burnt out; his small beard was twisted, too. He
drooped at the knees, he was a sheared-off man. Those
hands of his hung down looking gorged, and with loose
skin. The orgy was another clumsy invention, like vice
in the toilet, like Rick staggering around until he went
through the window. Those were the people who had
come to see Rickie Lester off. Now imagine this gang
breaking into Lydia's bedroom to wake her with a
proposition. She would have burst into tears.
No, the whole purpose was robbery. This was what
Ebry had come for. When the two jumped Lester and
grabbed the kitchen knife, they must have cut his ear
only to make him lie still. Probably he stopped strug
gling then and they tied him up. Riggie must have
yanked off his gold wedding band first thing. They
weren't going to kill him. Neither had ever been
booked for homicide, although Riggie was once an
accessory. It was the dropped 1V set (was Ebry too
puny to lift it?) that set off the panic, when Lydia
Lester ran from bed and Ebry threw her to the floor.
Rick Lester struggled to his feet, and then either one or
both of the robbers reached the murder point. Lucas
Ebry was chaotic enough to do it, scared, desperate;
the night hot enough, bad enough; Riggie Hines was
tough enough. You saw women like that in police court
for scalding a man with boiling grease, or for cutting
him. So, to go to the evil conclusion, Lester was
pushed. He couldn't have broken the window by stag
gering against it. The frames were old but they were
wood, not cardboard. He would have had to be pushed.
As soon as he fell, Ebry began to run around wiping
the fingerprints-from the 1V, from the knife. But
clean prints were found in Lester's Toyota. Experi
enced killers would have done something about Lydia
50 SAUL BELLOW
-she was a witness--but these two took off. They left
the loot and escaped down the back stairs. These were
ancient Chicago open back stairs and porches clapped
together of gray lumber, held up by crude cross-trusses.
There was a jumbled yard, a fence, and then the alley.
In the alley Riggie and Ebry split.
Corde's upper lip when he was reflecting turned
inward. His big open forehead rose bare towards the
crown, his Irish nose was short (he had Irish blood from
his mother) , his eyes were large , his mouth plain and
wide. So, then, they split. After splitting, Riggie got rid
of the wedding ring. She passed it to a man, one of the
street people , and asked him to keep it fer her. But as
soon as the reward was announced, this fellow went to
the police, made a statement, turned over the ring,
which was now in evidence, and claimed his dough. He
said he was willing to take the witness stand, but he
dropped out of sight later. Grady, the assistant State's
Attorney, had the cops looking for him. So there were
your facts. Corde wanted to be as impartial as possible,
severely, even passionately impartial, saying to himself
various things of characteristic oddity: Objectivity be
gins at home; harden yourself some more; it's no good
without a hard spirit; by telling yourself normal
sounding stories, all you do is cling to nonexistent
normalcy; then life is no more than you're "inclined to
understand ," and you're nowhere.
But the fact of facts was the body Corde had
identified at the hospital, the kid on the slab, the long
soiled feet, the face with the only-just-subtracted ex
pression and the hint of mature knowledge. And then
the sequel (another set of facts, framed in fire) : Grady
had ordered the body exhumed for further tests, but
these could not be made because the boy hadn't been
embalmed, and it was hot summer. However, the
family had been charged for embalming, and the bill
had been paid. But this was ordinary business practice ,
built-in fraud, nothing to get worked up about (al-
though he was worked up). This last consideration , the
decomposed body, was not mentioned by Corde. It
would have given an opening for deeper nastiness.
Mason said, "Well , you've been sitting there for
about five minutes without a word, only your lips
moving. You want me to go. You're sore at me."
"Not exactly," said Corde in his low voice.
"I had a few things to say and wasn't sure you'd give
me an appointment."
"Why not?"
"Maybe you don't want to see your antagonist face to
face."
"What makes you think you're my antagonist?"
"Because if you aim to crucify this black dishwasher,
you're going to have to fight me. Yes!" Corde was
shaking his head. "If some black had fallen through the
window, there wouldn't have been any damn reward or
investigation or case. How many black people were
killed in the same week? No big deals, no State's
Attorney Grady, no press coverage. "
"I'm sorry to say that's probably true . But it's my
responsibility on this job to oversee the students. That's
why we're discussing Rick Lester in the Dean's office,
this nice autumn day . " The nightmare fury of summer
was behind them, and the (decomposing) heat had
abated. As if the mad spell were over. But it had only
been transposed. The same rotten music continued.
This was its cooler key.
Corde understood very well what his nephew was
saying to him. He said it to himself, and this was how it
went: You meddle in things you have no sympathy
with. These people do what they can in the space
they've been confined to. Yes, they scrounge and they
rob and they fuck; they drink and take drugs, they cut
and shoot each other and die young. And what you, a
man of routine, can't forgive is that they have no
structure. They don't plan, and don't "do"; they only
hang out. That's what disgusts you most.
52 SAUL BELLOW
He said to Mason, "It's odd how little you feel for
Rick. He was a student like yourself."
"He wasn't like myself. He was your kind, not
mine. "
"He was a young man who went out o n a hot
night . . .
"
"And ran into some blacks who murdered him.

That's all you can see. You gave yourself away when
you talked about the case to Mother. She told me how
you described it. When the warrant went out for Riggie
Hines, she was hiding out with a dope pusher in South
Shore. The cops had to break down a door with
baseball bats and drag her out from under the bed.
That wasn't in the paper-she got it from you. You also
said that witnesses came running to claim the dough.
These people don't know what solidarity is. What's-his
name from Robert Taylor Homes, who described him
self as a buddy, fingered Lucas Ebry and repeated what
he claimed he heard. Those are my people, and you
made them all seem subhuman to my mother-wild-ass
savages from the Third World. And now I see that you
are writing something about County Jail. It was adver
tised in the Times. Read Albert Corde in Harper's for
November. With a complete Chicago background. You
think you have anything to say about the people of this
city?"
"The subject of those articles isn't the jail. There
is-there happens to be-a description of the jail in
·
them. "
"Uncle Albert , you don't know a damn about what
goes on."
"Because I haven't lived the life , like yourself?"
"You went to see County, and still you want to send
people to prison? What the hell good is that?"
Corde agreed. "The prisons certainly are awful."
"Why, the Swedish government refused extradition
in the case of one American because of the Attica riots
and those other stinking places. We have one of the
worst right next door in Pontiac." Mason had still more
to say. "According to Mother, you got your angle on
County Jail from Rufus Ridpath, whom they threw out
of there."
"Ridpath is as straight as they come."
"Your kind of black man."
"He seems to me a decent, intelligent public ser
vant."
"Public servant! What kind of civics shit is that? A
sadist and a fink . "
The conversation was leaking, sinking, capsizing.
But here with a raging headache was steady Corde, still
on the bridge, looking calm and responsible. Really, he
was fed up now. He wanted to run Mason out by the
seat of the pants.
Mason said, "A warden who beat up on prisoners."
"He was acquitted. You don't know damn-all about
it. Acquitted but still disgraced. And there's a man who
genuinely felt for the street people, worked to improve
the prison. Until he took over, it was run by the
criminals . . . . " Here Corde stopped and passed the
edge of his hand over his forehead, shading his eyes
from the overhead light. Mason was within easy reach
of the switch, but he made no move towards it. If he
rose from his seat, he would be on his way out. And
Mason was going. Only he had more to say. Apparently
he followed a prepared mental outline. Corde longed to
be rid of him-an acute longing. No bum's rush;
kicking him out was just a fantasy. Those greeny-blue
eyes and long eyelashes, and the youth pollen sprinkled
over the Huck Finn cheekbones, the cheerful pleasant
conventions of his suburban upbringing, the ingenuous
teeth representing ten thousand dollars' worth of or
thodontia, the brassy hair pulled back , the sallow face,
shaky pride, the distemper, infection, sepsis. You could
almost smell the paste odor of fever. Corde's anger,
when this odor reached him, began to pass off in
pulsations. He sat there feeling sorry.
54 SAUL BELLOW
"You'll probably go back to Mother and raise hell
with her because she repeated what you said."
"I won't do that . "
"That's right. I gave you your favorite opening. I'm
the one who makes her unhappy. You're the one that
protects her. Love your sister. "
Corde loved Elfrida. He did, in fact. And this, too,
was held against him.
"I was always having you rubbed into me," Mason
continued. "Uncle Albert this and Uncle Albert that:
A big man , and smart, and a notable. Uncle Albert
wrote those pieces on the Potsdam Conference in The
New Yorker. Uncle Albert saw Harry Truman play
poker, and came face to face with Joe Stalin."
"I sympathize with you there. You can get to hate the
absent model. But still there was your father to keep
the balance. . . "
.
"Yes, he put you down some."

"He thought I was a jerk," said Corde, quite neutral.
"You don't seem very sore about that."
"I'm not, very. Your father never did things by
halves. There were those he liked, all out, and those he
despised, the same. "
Mason said, "Off and o n you tried to make like a
good uncle. You took me fishing on the Cape once."
"I remember very well. We went to catch porgies in
the channel, and I fell in."
"You arrived in the night, and then in the morning
you put on shorts and you said we should go and fish off
the rocks. I thought your legs were very ugly."
"I'm no ballet dancer-Bugayev or Nureyev or what
ever. Well, I wasn't very graceful. I lost my footing on
those slanting rock slabs. They were covered with
seaweed. First thing I knew, I was falling."
"You took a flop and slid down your side over the
barnacles."
"And was cut in about fifty slices. Those cuts were
thin, but they were nasty."
"That's what it was. It left a nasty memory . "
"I went into the drink , rod and all . There was quite a
heavy swell . " Corde smiled , almost as if it was a
pleasant recollection.
He recalled the great weight of the dark green water,
and the sky upside down, vast clouds , bottoms up, all
white, and the fishing line curving on the current in a
long fluid pleat. The rod was lost , like his eyeglasses.
Then he couldn't get a grip in the slime of the breakwa
ter, and the boy was too small to help. After Corde at
last got himself out , he pulled off his sea-heavy shirt
and wrapped it around his thigh. "Those barnacles
were hard little bastards . " The scars they made were
like hash marks. "So that left an impression ," he said.
"It was the first time I saw anybody bleed like that . "
A porgy o r a flounder, i f they had managed t o hook
one in the channel, would have been less memorable ,
threshing and thrilling on the line , than Uncle Albert.
Dumb and inept Uncle Albert , who wrote about Stalin
and Churchill at Potsdam , didn't know how to fish.
Distortion underfoot because of his big bifocals . The
channel caught him. Nothing but a deep voice , a
bulging eye , an opinionated manner, long hairs growing
from his Adam's apple and , when he took off his pants,
disgusting shanks. Plus the blood. Odd , I never thought
my legs were so bad. Minna likes them well enough.
The way I'm put together entertains her. But then she
has a cosmic perspective . Not like this ornery kid
really, a cruel kid . He might have judged me with more
charity if he had foreseen that he himself would grow
up looking two-dimensional, like a drawing of a drill
er's rig. You had to study Mason to find the humanity in
him. It was as hard to see as the thin line of mercury in
some thermometers . But if you turned your thermome
ter in the light and found the lucky angle , you'd be sure
to get a reading.
Miss Parson now looked in. Aware that she had
stayed away too long (and you couldn't pry into the
56 SAUL BELLOW
secret feminine reasons for these irritating absences) ,
she put some melody into her voice, announcing,
"There's somebody waiting, Mr. Corde."
"One last thing," said Mason as he rose. "My mother
refused to underwrite a bond for Lucas Ebry. . . . "
"She didn't discuss it with me. I didn't advise her,"
said Corde.
Each of the long days in Minna's room was a succession

of curious states. The first was the state of rising,
pulling on your Chicago socks and sweaters (good
cashmere, but thinning at the heels and elbows) , assem
bling a dean who was less and less a dean within. The
room was dark, the cold mortifying. The toilet, located
in a small cell apart from the bathroom, was Gothic.
The toilet paper was rough. A long aeruginous pipe
only gave an empty croak when you pulled the chain.
No water above. You poured from one of the buckets
into the bowl . Corde himself now took charge and filled
them when the water was running. The buckets were
far too heavy for Gigi with her cardiac condition. The
bathtub might have been a reservoir if the stopper had
worked. All this was like old times in the States, before
the age of full convenience. It took you back.
On the dining room table, Turkish coffee was ready
in a long-handled brass pitcher, lots of chicory, togeth
er with boiled milk, grilled bread in place of toast,
brown marmalade with shreds of orange in it-ersatz,
but the best that conscientious Tanti Gigi could furnish.
Ladies with parcels reported to her. Her bed was a
command post. Kindly acquaintances did the errands.
Aged women rose at four to stand in line for a few eggs,
a small ration of sausages, three or four spotted pears.
Corde had seen the shops and the produce, the gloomy
queues-brown, gray, black, mud colors, and an at
mosphere of compulsory exercise in the prison yard.
The kindly ladies were certainly buying on the black
market , since Corde and Minna gave Gigi all the lei,
bought with dollars at the preposterous rate of ex
change. Corde ate grapes and tangerines and other
black market luxuries. From time to time he was served
meat. It was the general opinion of the ladies that there
should be good things in the house of death. Especially
for people from the blessed world outside, foreigners
who took steaks and tangerines for granted , who would
feel the privation , who were as fastidious as dragons. It
was outrageous what they devoured , in their inno
cence. Feeding an American must have diverted these
elderly women. But they had forgotten, apparently,
how to cook a steak. The meat was served dry, and
even scorched. Maybe the cooking oil was no good.
Anyway, the meat tasted of fire and suggested sacrifice.
It carried a creaturely flavor; the smell of the stall, of
the hide, was still there, and he had to suppress the
unwanted feeling of animal intimacy that it gave him.
But he ate his steak when it was served and told Gigi
how good it was. He knew how much organization it
took to get it. Gigi drove herself hard, knocked herself
out. A physician cousin would come and put his
stethoscope to her, and order her to stay in bed, but she
got up to mix a cake for Corde because he had once
said he liked her raisin cake, and when she wasn't
baking she was otherwise busy. She dragged boxes from
the shelves, looking for family records. She answered
the telephone on the double. She put a shawl over her
back and trotted downstairs to consult with Joanna, the
concierge. Concierges had police connections. You had
to keep on the good side of them. If the elevator door
had not been completely shut, you might see the top of
58 SAUL BELLOW
Gigi's head as she worked her way down step by step.
Defensive magic was how Corde described these propi
tiatory calls Gigi went below to make. The staircase
smelled of ancient plaster fallen from the gaps opened
by the earthquake, and when you opened the door you
were struck by the cold; it was like being thwacked with
the flat of a saber.
Fifty years ago Gigi had been sent to study commer
cial English in London; and she spoke the language
well enough, in the hoity-toity way of foreigners when
they address Americans in English English. "See here,
dear Albert, you will find the article you are seeking
upon the buffet." But she wasn't being superior, only
singing songs from a better time. She wouldn't have
dreamed of putting the Dean down. "When this trouble
is over, " she promised him, "we will have to have a
taita tait. "
Corde saw how it was. In this oppressive socialist
wonderland she had depended on her sister to protect
her. Now her sister was dying (although by saying
"When this trouble is over " Gigi denied it) and she
assumed the senior role. After years as an understudy
she was trying to play it. She even took on Valeria's
doubts about him. Corde became aware of this when he
noticed that Gigi sometimes examined his face silently,
dark , warm, brown eyes dilated with female specula
tion: Could he really, but really, be trusted? It was
obvious that the question of his stability had been much
discussed here. With his record of debauchery (some
thing like Don Giovanni's 1 ,003 seductions), would he
really settle down with their Minna? Corde no longer
minded this. It was only fair that Gigi, too, should have
a crack at him. American behavior was wild by the
standards of these old-fashioned Eastern Europeans.
Corde might have thrilled her by taking her into his
confidence. "I did know some wild women, but that's
over and done with. I wouldn't worry if I were you."
Tell it to the parole board! .
Tanti Gigi in her seventies was still the little sister,
and willful, given to fits of goodness, tolerating no
resistance to her sacrifices. Corde said to Minna, "Your
aunt has all kinds of ideas. "
"Yes, I know. "
" I find it touching. These sisters."
"In the old days, when she was beautiful, she loved
to dress. She was a marvelously fashionable dresser. I
remember how people turned to look at her in the
street. But then during the forties she began taking in
the children of families who died in the war. There
were about twenty orphans. My mother helped her.
Then her husband died."
The apartment was in Valeria's name. Cousins dis
cussed Gigi's future with Minna. What would she do
when she was alone?
Just before Valeria's stroke, Gigi had had her hair
done-bobbed, crimped, marcelled at the bottom
(Corde didn't have the right word)-and now the whole
arrangement was coming apart, standing out stiffly
from her slender neck like the dry underfronds of a
palmetto. She fussed over Corde at breakfast especial
ly. "I wish we had a proper toaster, but there is not
one. Can this coffee be drunk? It was clever of you to
bring a tin of British tea from Chicago. Can we not
obtain a foreign newspaper for you at the Interconti
nental?" She also said, "What a pity that you cannot
see what a beautiful country we have, instead of the
dark side, and how frightfully dreary." She must have
learned her English from Beatrix Potter's Tale of Two
Bad Mice. It was pure nanny, in a Balkan version.
Corde said, "At the Intercontinental I saw nothing
but Pravda and Tribuna Ludu. They don't seem to
carry the Herald Tribune. " But he was really in two
minds about the news. At home he read too many
papers. He was better off without his daily dose of
world botheration, sham happenings, without newspa
per phrases. Nothing true-really true-could be said
in the papers. In the dining room there was a huge
shortwave radio which looked as if it could reach Java
60 SAUL BELLOW
but gave only j amming squeals. The big TV with its
wooden cowl was equally useless. On it you saw
nobody but the dictator. He inspected , reviewed, greet
ed , presided; and there were fanfares, flowers and
limousines. People were shown applauding. But if
emigration were permitted, the country would be
empty in less than a month.
The Dean began to take a special interest in the
house plants. It was a good season for cyclamens. The
shops were filled with pots of them. He looked up
cyclamens in the big Larousse . Observing that Corde
went about the apartment watering the plants, Thnti
Gigi had her agents bring more flowers. He was glad to
have their company. He believed they refreshed his
head. The African violets he fussed over at home, those
would all be dead by now.
After breakfast he went back to Minna's room, sat at
Minna's student table with his coat over his shoulders ,
tried to write a letter or make a few notes for his new
project in collaboration with Beech, read some of the
documents Beech had given him; then he discovered
that he was in a strange state. Presently he found
himself staring at the cyclamens. And often he crept
back into bed. The trial of Reggie Hines and Lucas
Ebry was now in its second week. His office was
supposed to keep him posted. Probably the jurors
would be let out to do their Christmas shopping, and
nothing would happen until after the holidays. As yet
Miss Porson had sent no mail. They'd only been away
eight days. So Corde slept a great deal, but not well.
The restless ecstasy was what he had.
On some mornings the sun shone-dear winter blue.
He looked through the ivy twigs on the porch side of
the room. Small frozen berries, dark blue , fell from
them. Pigeons descended. They must have been fed by
the old ladies . But he was not greatly interested in the
birds. It was the cyclamen plants that absorbed him
hypnotically-the dark cores of the pink and the more
purple circles of the white, the petals turned back, the
leaves mottled in many shades of green. They were said
by Larousse to belong to the primrose family. They
grew from corms. Someone had once suggested to him
that these green beings produced their leaves and
flowers in a state of sleep, perfection devoid of con
sciousness, design without nerves. Put a handful of dirt
in the pot, and they carne up with this beauty. Who had
said that, about the sleeping life of plants? Brooding
over the cyclamens on the table, he often dozed; he felt
too hazy to remember anything. He thought, if you had
enough of these plants in a room and watered them
with a Nembutal solution, they might cure insomnia,
make a dream atmosphere.
His biological clock hadn't caught up. An abnormal
sleepiness overtook him in the morning. He didn't fight
it. He woke in the chair and found himself leaning
back, his arms folded and his face turned upwards like a
radar disk. The position made his neck ache. Giving in,
he stripped and crawled naked under the covers. As he
did this, he sometimes felt how long he had lived and
how many, many times the naked creature had crept
into its bedding. Minna would say nonsense to this, and
that he was, like herself, younger than his years, but the
coil in the person, so tight in early life, was certainly
much looser. Not so loose as in his rnother-in-law
Valeria, in intensive care, was always on his mind-but
how could you deny the slippage?
Occasionally Minna woke him from his after
breakfast sleep. She carne and asked him urgently (as if
he would dream of refusing) to get up and greet special
visitors. He heard names like Cousin Cornel, Badia
Tich, Dr. Serbanescu, Dr. Voynich, Vlada's brother,
relatives and colleagues of her parents. (The word
"colleague" had far more weight here than in America.
Americans now said "associate," as in "Ali Baba and
the Forty Associates.") Most of the callers were elderly
ailing people of breeding. They were aware how seedy
they were, and seemed to shrug when shaking hands, as
if to say, "You see how it is." To Corde they looked as if
62 SAUL BELWW
they were gotten up for a Depression party. They
chatted in rusty French , for his sake, sparing him their
worse English ; and as they talked they tried of course to
make out the American husband who sat there, hang
loose. He had pulled his clothing on half dazed, and felt
insufficiently connected with his collar, socks, shoes,
jacket. The Dean had not bought a new suit since
getting married, five years ago. He no longer needed to
make himself attractive , to divert attention from his
thinning hair, long neck, circular face ("something like
a sunflower in winter," were his own words) . Still not
awake, he answered polite inquiries with matching
politeness, depending upon the measured bass voice to
get him through. At least the Rareshes' only daughter
had married an American who spoke some French.
French was highly valued here, French was a delicious
accomplishment. He explained that he had lived in
Paris once, but his conversational powers were limited.
He drank a glass of brandy (despite the dishcloth
moldiness of the flavor, it had a clean, rousing effect) ;
he ate a slice of Tanti's raisin cake, chased it with a cup
of tea. He observed that everybody present was trying
to tell him something, to convey by various signs what
conditions here were. He gathered, moreover, that the
colleagues and cousins were extremely proud of Min
na's scientific eminence. He was with them there. It
warmed him to think how much there was also on the
human side; if it had been appropriate to let himself go,
he would have told them how rich she was in human
qualities. The visitors would have been glad if the Dean
had spoken intelligently about the United States in
world politics . After all, he was from the blessed world
outside. The West. He was free to speak. For them it
was impossible. All conversations with foreigners had
to be reported. Few people were bold enough to visit
the American library. Those who sat in the reading
room were probably secret agents. It was one of the
greatest achievements of Communism to seal off so
many millions of people. You wouldn't have thought it
possible in this day and age that the techniques of
censorship should equal the techniques of transmission.
Of course , as in France under the Occupation, these
captive millions were busy scrounging, keeping them
selves alive . In the sadness of the afternoon, the
subdued light of the curtailed day, the chill of the room
(so disheartening!), the callers would have been grate
ful to hear something so exotic as an intelligent Ameri
can; words of true interest, words of comfort, too--this
dictatorship could not last forever. But he hadn't the
heart to tell them things. Besides, Corde was not
altogether with it. Not even the rousing brandy brought
him into focus. It was not until Professor Voynich was
leaving that mostly silent Corde identified him. Why,
this was Vlada's brother. He rose to shake the doctor's
hand a second time. "Do you expect Vlada for Christ
mas?''
"Definitely. "
"I'm sorry . . . I'm a little vague today," said Corde.
"I think she'll be bringing me news from Chicago. "
Professor Voynich was elderly, wasted-looking. His
sister was stout, pale, round ; very unlike him. But then
his sister hadn't been in prison for-for how many years
was it? Much of the time the doctor had been in solitary
confinement. Voynich said, as Corde was showing him
out, "Your wife tells me you haven't seen much of the
city. She is unfortunately busy. I should be happy one
of these days to show you, before my sister arrives."
"I'd be grateful. "
Corde, after h e had closed the front door, didn't
return to the parlor. He went back to the room and got
into the sack again. A temperature of fifty-five degrees
was ideal for cyclamens. He took his cue from them and
gave up consciousness, he checked out. He was not
sorry to feel himself going, surrendering his senses
sound, touch, closing his eyes-something like a
swoon, he thought.
But next morning-and it was morning before he
knew it-he was lively again. Someone telephoned
64 SAUL BELLOW
from the American embassy. One of Corde's friends in
Washington must have pulled an important wire. A car
would be calling for Mr. Corde at half past ten. Corde
shaved carefully, dressed neatly and went down.
Joanna, the concierge, watching from her sous-sol
recess, had an event to report to the agents that day-a
limousine with the American flag pulling up for Min
na's husband.
Corde had sent a note to the cultural attache. This
was Milancey, a smooth-faced man who wore a fur hat;
who had a hunched smile; who had seen to their visas
when they arrived, had met them at the airport.
Milancey was expert in making the position clear: the
U.S. Government had already done its duty by the
Cordes and wasn't prepared to put itself out further.
The limousine was a surprise, therefore. Milancey
would never have sent this Bechstein-style automobile.
Maybe the National Science Foundation, maybe a
White House adviser familiar with Minna's work, had
interceded , and word had come down to Milancey, who
had passed it along to the First Secretary or the
Minister. Someone at the top had dispatched the
Lincoln Continental in which Corde was now riding,
warmer than he had been in more than a week, resting
his feet on a block of smooth felt that tumbled forward.
In spite of these comforts, his eyes were those of a man
under extreme pressure. Reaching the blocked, guard
ed street, the limousine turned into the embassy court
yard. Corde was met by a young woman, who guided
him past the Marine sergeant's desk and up the circular
marble staircase of the little palace to the Ambassa
dor's office. In the anteroom a secretary rose and
opened the door. The Ambassador was standing wait
ing behind his desk.
"Mr. Corde?"
Corde wondered just why he was being received by
this discreet, soft-spoken, almost gentle , mysteriously
earnest, handsome black man. Minna's astrophysics
was not the explanation , not all of it. The Ambassador
said that he had served in the Paris embassy in the
mid-fifties, when Corde was writing for the Herald
Tribune. "I would tum to your pieces first thing." He
gestured towards a sofa. It would be an informal
conversation. It was possible that there wasn't much
official business to do in the holiday gap towards the
end of December, but it also occurred to Corde that the
Ambassador might have read the articles in Harper's.
Or perhaps Time or Newsweek had picked up the story
of the Ebry trial from the hometown papers , which
were none too friendly. Corde had accused the papers
of prejudicing the public against Rufus Ridpath, direc
tor of the County Jail , when he was being tried for
manhandling prisoners. They did a number on Rid
path. They printed damaging statements by informants
who weren't named. Grotesque front-page close-ups
made him look like a gorilla. To do this to the only man
who had the guts to go into the worst of the tiers and
recover control of the jail from the bam bosses and
their gangs was an outrage. "Somehow the media are
more comfortable with phonies, with unprincipled
men," was what Corde wrote . And now, in the Ebry
case , the media had a clear shot at him, and they were
banging away. A more experienced, craftier man would
have anticipated this. But moral excitement (was it
because it was so rare?) undermined your practical
judgment. Anyway, it was open season on Corde. The
papers reported Mason's friendship with Ebry and the
charges of the radical students. They hinted that Corde,
a racist, was carrying out the racist policies of the
college. There was an even more embarrassing compli
cation. Corde's own cousin, Max Detillion, was defend
ing Ebry. Mason had gotten him to take over the case
from the lawyer Ebry himself had retained. That was
wickedly shrewd of Mason. Oh, how misleading those
ingenuous teeth were, and the youth pollen, too, and
the long eyelashes! The kid was a devil. Cousin Max,
feuding with Corde, called a press conference immedi
ately to announce that he wasn't taking a penny in fees
66 SAUL BELLOW
for representing this ghetto dishwasher. Maxie had a
passion for publicity, and this time he was good copy.
He owed that to his hated cousin, not to his legal
talents. The source of Maxie's hatred was love gone
sour, family wrangling. He was maddened with imagi
nary wrongs. Flashy, elderly, corrupt Maxie, with his
bold eyes and his illiterate, furiously repetitious elo
quence, had a moronic genius for getting attention. He
needed the publicity; his practice was declining. The
first lawyer was asked to withdraw.
But it was to no purpose that Corde worried himself
about Mason and Max and the media in Chicago, for
the Ambassador seemed to know nothing about any of
it. He had prepared himself for difficulties this polite
man had no thought of making. The Ambassador only
wanted to talk about Paris in the fifties. "But you don't
write for the papers anymore ," he said.
"I gave that up. I still publish a piece now and then.
There was one recently . . . "
"I must look that up . " The Ambassador made a note
with a silver ballpoint. "What sort of work have you
been doing?"
"Professor of journalism back in my hometown.
Even a dean. I'm not a real administrative type. I doubt
that I can call myself a real professor, but I was curious
to see what it was like."
It was calming to sit with the Ambassador. His office
was beautifully furnished. The man was handsome and
there was something about hinr-breeding, delicacy.
Also , getting out of Minna's room was important, a
change of scene. Corde had been shut in for too long.
"I suppose you had cultural inclinations you couldn't
satisfy by journalism. "
"Right you are . I t would have to be a very special
need to transfer you from Paris to Chicago . I had some
reading to do, and wanted to find people to talk to. The
right people to talk to--that's the hardest part of all."
"You must be interested in especially difficult
things. "
"I don't think they're all that difficult or esoteric. I
was too busy in Paris. When busyness takes hold of
you, then art, philosophy, poetry, those things go out
the window. Just before I made the decision to move I
was reading Rilke, especially his wartime letters."
"I don't know those."
On the leather sofa with the Ambassador, conversa
tion seemed definitely possible. Mind you, it could
never have been easy. When Rilke had complained
about his inability to find an adequate attitude to the
things and people about him, Corde had thought, Yes,
that's very common-that's me, too. Odd that with
such a temperament he should have become a newspa
perman. A man of words? Yes, but words of the wrong
kind. For some years, to cure himself of bad habits , bad
usage , he had been mostly silent. And now it seemed
he had even forgotten how to open his mouth. Corde's
confinement in the silent room where Minna had done
her lessons in astrophysics or mathematics, where
Valeria kept her relics and wrote her letters, had made
him rusty, had shrouded him in mute heart-aching
numbness. There was a moment at the beginning of this
chat with the Ambassador when he imagined that his
face was surfacing, coming up from under like the face
that Mason must have seen at the Cape , rising up from
the green Atlantic, spectacles lost , back hair floating,
big bare brow, French-Irish nose, blind eyes.
It wasn't that subjects were lacking. He was prepar
ing to make an impassioned statement about Valeria.
Together with this he wanted to try out on the Ambas
sador some of his notions about the mood of the West.
Oh, he had lots of topics: the crazy state of the U.S . ,
the outlook and psychology of officialdom in the Com
munist world, the peculiar psychoses of penitentiary
societies like this one. The distinguished gentleness of
the Ambassador was very encouraging. Corde actually
wanted to open up. But he wisely decided to let the
Ambassador direct the conversation.
The Ambassador asked for details of Valeria's case,
68 SAUL B ELLOW
and Corde became more lively as he outlined it. A
drink would have helped, but it wasn't a good idea to
ask for one. The Ambassador said that he had read his
note to Mr. Milancey very carefully. Corde had written
slapdash, carelessly, never thinking that the attache
would show it around. Now he tried to remember what
he had said.
"There are certain parallels," the Ambassador said.
"I have a foreign wife, too. Mine is French. Her
mother, an old French lady who lives with us, is very
ill . "
"I'm sorry to hear it. Yes , I see why you reacted. Can
anything be done? We've been here for eight days-1
think. I can't even keep track of the dates. My wife has
seen her mother twice ."
"Only twice . . . ?"
"About twenty minutes each time. For the second
visit we didn't have permission from the Colonel-the
hospital superintendent ."
"How was it arranged, then?"
Corde glanced about. Even here , naming names
might be a mistake . The embassy must certainly be
bugged. "I don't know how. But my wife was accused
of pulling a fast one. That would be completely out of
character. She's an unusually . . . "
"She's an astronomer?"
"If we hadn't rushed here, we'd have been at Mount
Palomar. The telescope would have been hers part of
Christmas week. Now, well, she's never off the phone ,
trying to find help. You can imagine what a state she's
in. She last saw her mother five days ago . She's
grieving."
"Of course she is. What's the reason given?"
"Visits are out, no visiting in intensive care," said
Corde.
"Yes , you wrote that in your letter. That is unusually
rigid. Well, I'm on good terms with the Minister of
Health. I'll call him this afternoon, shall I?"
"I assume he runs all the hospitals. He must be the
Colonel's superior. I'd be very grateful. Her mother
won't live long. In times like these the whole thing may
seem unimportant. I mean," Corde explained himself,
"considering what one reads every day-terrorist acts,
famine, genocide , events in Latin America, in Cambo
dia or in Uganda, where a hostage, an old lady at
Entebbe who had to be taken to the hospital , was
strangled by Amin's people. These brutal, horrible
events. In Addis Ababa the regime has been murdering
adolescents to crush the opposition, and they leave
children's corpses on the parents' doorsteps. That's
how things are done now. . . . "
"It's no trifle to Mrs. Corde , nevertheless , that she

isn't allowed to see her mother. "
"Nor t o me . My wife is a simple person. N o politics.
Her mother wanted her out of it, brought her up that
way. No politics, no history. Perhaps too much that
way. Back home in Chicago, magazines arrive for her
from civil rights organizations , and books by survivors
of the camps, refugees. Because she's from Eastern
Europe she's on the mailing lists. But she's too busy, so
I'm the one that reads all this grim stuff. That's why I
have a fairly complete idea of how things are in this
part of the world-forced labor, mental hospitals for
dissenters, censorship. I've gotten into the habit of
reading this mail for her. She asks me to brief her.
Anyway , here's the thing in outline : mother-in-law is in
the Party hospital, and the superintendent is a colonel
in the secret police. Not the type to respond to the
humane appeal. I suspect, anyway, that he would like
to teach my wife a lesson."
"Because she left the country?"
"That's part of it . Now the lady comes with an
American passport and husband , flies in without a visa
so that the embassy has to come to the rescue-by the
way, she's still a dual citizen-and expects the Colonel
to waive the regulations for her. What does she think
this is? Besides , her mother was Minister of Health
thirty years ago while this man was still very junior,
70 SAUL BELLOW
learning his job in prison hospitals. According to the
literature I've become addicted to , techniques are
different now , according to Amnesty International they
inject mind drugs in psychiatric hospitals , and who
knows how many people are dying in those places.
Electric shocks, sulfadiazine injections . And it was
much rawer before , when the Colonel was an appren
tice. One of my mother-in-law's colleagues, a Minister
of Justice, had his head hacked off in his cell. They
decided not to bring him to trial . " Corde's excitement
was running away with him. He couldn't say why. Well,
yes , he could say approximately why. But it was
certainly tactless, stupid, to lecture a high-ranking and
experienced foreign service officer about atrocities.
Tocqueville was dead right when he said that Ameri
cans (democrats everywhere) had no aptitude for con
versation, they lectured . Bombast , cliches, chewed-up
newsprint, naturally made the other party tune out.-He
had heard what you had heard, read what you had
read. The Ambassador was too well bred to cut him off.
He listened , he nodded, he waited. And Corde did
after all have something to communicate. He tried
again. "What I meant earlier when I spoke of trifles is
that everybody now follows a scale : A is bad , but B is
worse and C worse still. When you reach N, unspeak
able evil, A becomes trivial. After thirty years in police
work, and having seen whole regiments of corpses, the
Colonel must have special views on suffering and
death. So what's all the fuss about one old woman? You
use the most extreme case to reduce all the rest . It's the
same at home . . . . I can imagine what the Colonel
would say about the ethical values of the West. So
called."
He sensed that he had not altogether turned the
Ambassador off by lecturing him. He was getting a
polite hearing still. This man, quite black , very slender,
had style , class , cultivation. He wore a light gray
well-cut suit, and an Hermes necktie (Corde recognized
the stirrup motif) , and narrow black shoes which could
only have come from Italy. Subtly considerate , he
listened to Corde's explanations (or bombast) , but
obviously he didn't care to discuss Western humanism,
civilized morality, nihilism East and West. He was a
busy official.
"Let's see what the Minister of Health has to say."
"My wife thinks that her mother can't understand
why she doesn't come."
"But that's not how you see it-you don't agree?"
"The old woman , with all her experience, must have
it figured out."
"Is she fully conscious?"
"She was when we last saw her. They put a ballpoint
in her fingers, and she wrote on a pad that she wanted
to be taken home . That is, she wrote the word 'home .'
But she can't be unhooked from the machines. The
Colonel offered to do that. "
"Ah, yes?"
"Yes, he said if she were moved out of intensive care
she could be visited every day. But he was only
kidding. The respiratory center is gone. She couldn't
live ten minutes. This was just his way of sticking it to
the daughter. A bonus."
The Ambassador was not altogether comfortable
with these details. He was sympathetic, he was exquis
itely decorous, but he didn't need to hear it all. But
then Corde wasn't transmitting it all. Involuntary mem
ory had passed through his head Goya's painting of
Saturn-the naked squatting giant, open-mouthed, de
vouring. Death swallowing the old woman by the face.
Again, the inability to find the adequate attitude.
Corde seemed sober enough, but his controls were not
in dependable working order.
Minna was always asking, "What's Mother thinking?
What do you suppose goes through her mind?" And
Corde often put it to himself: What would the old
woman have felt if she had been able to open her eyes
and had seen us standing there in those gowns and
surgical masks? He was certain that she had laid her
72 SAUL BELLOW
dying plans carefully, but she couldn't arrange Minna's
future. There was still the one open question: Could
he, Corde, this American, be trusted not to harm , or
betray, or even ruin her daughter? The old woman was
a very shrewd old woman, but she was a romantic old
woman, too. She had loved her husband . When he
died , all that was left of him was in their daughter. She
sent her daughter directly into cosmic space . Nothing
but particle physics , galaxies, equations . Minna had
never read the Communist Manifesto, had never heard
of Stalin's Great Terror. Now then, could Valeria
entrust such a daughter to a man like Corde? Suppose
Valeria had seen him staring down at her in intensive
care, what sort of face did that gauze mask cover
sane, or what? A gentle soul , or a masked killer? Corde
was always afraid that that deep old woman knew his
worst thoughts, instability, weakness, vices. Oh, Jesus!
So must I end up responsible for this life of maternal
sacrifice , and the Roman matron purity, and the whole
classic achievement! There's something crazy in this,
too. There are people who find you out. And especially
old women do . In Pushkin's Queen of Spades, maybe it
wasn't so much gambler's lust that drove that wild
plunger, Hermann; he may have hidden himself in the
old woman's room because he needed to face her
terrible gaze in a test of his soul. Well, Corde had his
disorders, but his reply to Valeria was yes. Yes, she
could trust him. He was stable. Yes, he had found his
finn point . That was what he would have been ready to
tell her. "Don't worry. Don't put me in your agonies. I
love your daughter! "
No hint o f these reflections (he hoped) was given;
nor of what the nearness of death was doing to him,
how wide open he was , how near to an emotional
eruption.
The Ambassador must have been one of those patri
cian blacks from Washington or Philadelphia whose
ancestors were manumitted slaves before the Civil War.
Corde had met some of those before. They had summer
homes in Edgartown. This was how, probably mistak
enly , he placed him. "I can promise you some news
later in the day, Mr. Corde," he said. "And if there's
something else the embassy can help with . . ."
"Maybe the information library can let me have the

Tribune for last week? Last papers I saw were on the
plane flying over."
"I think w e can find you some o f those. There's a
journalist in town, by the way, who spoke of you
yesterday. Spangler, the columnist. "
"What, is Dewey Spangler here?''
"He's on a swing through Eastern Europe. We had
him in for a drink and he spoke of you warmly. You're
old friends?"
"We were at school together. I haven't seen him in
years-ten, maybe. "
"May I give him your number?"
"Why, sure."
Spangler never looked him up in Chicago, but there
was no need to tell this to the Ambassador. He had
already said more than was strictly necessary. Too
much comment altogether.
An old-boy reunion here in the Balkans would
appeal to Dewey. What-two kids from the sidewalks
of Chicago , and one of them now, forty years later, a
syndicated bit -shot opinion-maker, and meeting in this
heavy Communist and Byzantine capital? A great
setting! Dewey had in fact become-what?-a public
spokesman , a large-scale operator in D . C. For years he
had kept his distance from Corde because he didn't like
to be remembered as the kinky adolescent who had told
preposterous lies, had screaming quarrels with his
mother, and wrote violently revolutionary poems.
Corde didn't care greatly for Dewey's column . It was
too statesmanlike and doughy. He was trying hard to be
a Walter Lippmann. But Lippmann had been the pupil
of Santayana and the protege of potentates at an age
when sharp-toothed Dewey in an undershirt was still
shrieking and grimacing at his mother.
74 SAUL BELLOW
But we understood each other forty years ago , Corde
thought. Of course it was Swinburne, Wilde , Nietzsche,
Walt Whitman, in high school. Perfumed herbage,
intoxicating lyricism and lamentation, rich music, nihil
ism and decadence had made them pals . The fat faded
pink volume of Oscar Wilde that Corde had found on
the lowest shelves, behind Valeria's bed, the pastry
rich hyperboles of sightless souls and red hells , might
have been an augury of this reunion. And there was
still another connection (he would have thought of it if
his wits had been working normally) : Max Detillion , his
cousin, once had shared their literary interests. He said
he did, anyway. A showman even then, Maxie used to
recite "The Ballad of Reading Gaol . " "For each man
kills the thing he loves . . . The poor dead woman
whom he loved, and murdered in her bed . " Dewey
Spangler had made wicked fun of him. "Fat-ass
lowbrow . . . gross and dainty . . . Arse Poetica"
these were some of the cracks he used to make. But
later Dewey turned tolerant. He said that Maxie had
after all shaped up and made something of himself.
Dewey respected "achievers ," if they didn't achieve too
much. Corde's opinion had followed the reverse pat
tern. He believed that Maxie had lost track of himself
altogether. Dewey had had no practical dealings with
Max. Max had cost Corde tens of thousands. Even that
might have been forgiven if only you had been able to
talk openly and reasonably to the man. But the more
harm he did you, the more harm he claimed you had
done him. He grabbed everything for himself, even the
injury. And then you were up against it-no rational
judgment, you see, a kind of mystery in itself. Then
there were other kinds of craziness, like the one about
publicity. Mad for being in the papers, Max hung out
with newspapermen, gossiping and buying them drinks.
Naturally, he grabbed the Ebry case . It gave him a shot
in the arm. And now Maxie, before the jury at Thir
teenth and Michigan, swept the courtroom with bold
Rooseveltian looks, the statesman-lion, a massive man
but falling apart. The cause of the illness was neither
virus nor bacteria, but erotic collapse . Maxie was in
despair. Perhaps celebrity might be a remedy.
In a way Cousin Albert suffered with Cousin Max.
There came to mind (Corde was a terrific reader; he
had read far too much) Balzac's sex monsters in Cous
ine Bette, and the pitiable Baron Hulot, a feeble
ancient man making passes at the woman who was
nursing his dying wife. Corde had his reasons for these
thoughts, for if he was going to see Dewey Spangler
they would be discussing Cousin Max. Most likely Max
had sent Spangler clippings from Chicago, where he
was doing so wonderfully. Now they were celebrities,
all three.
This was a burden on Corde: sorrow. Cousins, and
once playmates, and affectionate, and Max had been a
handsome young man, and now . . . some sort of
blood trouble, so that Max needed not a literal dialysis
but another kind of cleaning up. In his youth Max
suffered from frequent nosebleeds; this was why Corde
fixed on the corrupted blood.
The Ambassador had mentioned neither Harper's
nor the Ebry trial , which meant that Spangler hadn't
told him what was happening. It figured. Why should
Dewey first claim him as an old pal and then)ouse him
up? Corde and Spangler had been rivals thirty years
ago. At first he, Corde, had been the more successful of
the two. He was still in his early twenties when The
New Yorker printed his personal account of the Pots
dam Conference. The conference had been closed to
the press, but Harry Vaughan, who was Truman's aide,
had been a friend of Corde's father, and Corde, then a
GI, most innocent-looking, with his goggles and cow
lick, had wangled his way in. Vaughan was annoyed by
the report, or was obliged to say that he was; but for
jealous Spangler, who was then stuck in Chicago
writing about Planned Parenthood and covering tene
ment fires for the City News Bureau, Corde's success
was a terrible thing. It gave him a gruesome wound.
76 SAUL B ELLOW
But he was combative , a fierce competitor and an
ingenious politician; he made excellent use of his injury
and his rage and soon shot ahead. Corde was much less
ambitious than Spangler, wrote for a smaller public,
seemed sometimes unnecessarily obscure (even, as one
of his editors had said, "reclusive"). And when Corde
became a professor (no big distinction; by now there
were millions of professors) , Spangler interpreted it as
a victory ("I was too much for him, be's outclasse d, no
contest , hanging up his gloves") and became more
tolerant, more friendly. He sympathized with Corde.
Spangler was the worldly one , a shrewder man by far.
To the shrewder man those two articles in Harper's
must have seemed unaccountable acts of self-destruc
tion. Corde gave up his cover, ran out, swung wild at
everyone, made enemies, riled the press most of all
-treason to his own trade-virtually asking to be
blown away. It was a hell of a strange development.
Strangest of all was Corde's regression, for that was
how Spangler would describe it. Corde had gone back
to an earlier standard, to the days when be and
Spangler were reading Shelley and Swinburne together
in Lincoln Park. At the age of seventeen they would
often quote to each other the line in which Shelley had
described George III: "An old mad blind despised and
dying king.'' The wonderful hard music of those words
used to stir them. And it was this sort of music that
Corde apparently wanted to work into his journalism.
If indeed it was journalism. If indeed it was Shelley. H
it wasn't , instead, Corde as George ill himself, old,
mad, blind, and sure to be despised in Chicago. Span
gler when he had read him would first have been
startled, then thrilled by the violence of his self-injury,
and finally sorry for the poor guy. It was a wonder the
editors of Harper's didn't try to restrain him. Here and
there he just skirted libel. Crazy with rage , doing
himself in .
All these conjectures (Max, Dewey, himself) Corde
felt in his silent lips, with the buzzing, tickling sensation
one used to get as a kid by playing tunes through
cigarette paper on a comb . Wondering: Were these (the
personalities, articles, trials, etc.) his own portion of
the big-scale insanities of the twentieth century? Did
these present thoughts occur because he had been shut
up too long in Minna's old room? Or were they the
effects of Valeria's dying, or of the death of Rick
Lester? Did one turn aside the force of thousands of
declines or dooms or deaths and then decide , by some
process of selection too remote ever to be known, to fix
on certain ones? Yes, and then let those you have
chosen paint away in broad visceral strokes until the
fiery brushing undermined and overturned your judg
ment. And at last the superstructure (put together with
the protective cunning of the blind) began to totter?
The Ambassador walked out of the office with him to
the top of the delicate marble staircase . The embassy
must have been a boyar's palace once . The smooth
banisters were iridescent and curved again and again
like a nautilus shell. The black Ambassador from first
to last was very sympathetic: the sympathy may have
been no more than highly elaborated propriety, but
Corde somehow didn't think so. (No, it wasn't only
two, three, five chosen deaths being painted thick
ly, terribly, convulsively inside him, all over his guts,
liver, heart, over all his organs, but a large picture of
cities, crowds, peoples, an apocalypse, with images and
details supplied by his own disposition, observation, by
ideas, dreams, fantasies, his peculiar experience of
life.)
"It occurs to me ," said Corde to the Ambassador,
"since my friend Spangler is here to interview big shots,
he may be able to put in a word for my wife . "
"It's certainly a possibility. H e must have contacts.
Yes, I'd ask him if I were you. He's staying at the
Intercontinental. I'll see to it that he gets your number.
He may be hard to reach."
The Ambassador's secretary had gathered u p some
recent newspapers for Corde . After the good-bye
78 SAUL BELLOW
handshake-what Mencken once had called "the usual
hypocrisies"-Corde withdrew into a comer near the
desk of the Marine guard and shuffled through the
pages. He didn't , to tell the truth, want to find any
Chicago items. Some of the papers were held between
his knees. No , he didn't look too carefully. But Chicago
was nowhere mentioned. He must be nuts ("bubble
gum in the brain") to build such extensive and anxious
fantasies about the Ebry case. What he did find was one
of Dewey Spangler's syndicated columns. He didn't
read it, he only glanced through it. To take your oldest
friends seriously in their public character was not easy.
He generally put it to himself that Dewey had won a
brilliant victory over his own handicaps. You had to
bear in mind, moreover, that as a kid Dewey had had a
mass of handicaps. He had found the most advanta
geous way of putting them together. You had to hand it
to him. He had come a long way , for sure.
Corde walked back from the embassy; he refused the
limousine. Minna would have been alarmed , but no
one was about to snatch him in the street. You couldn't
expect her to be rational now. Earth was strange
enough at the best of times. There was nothing too rum
to be true. That needed frequent emphasis. Nothing.
Under the looping brim of the fedora, as he walked, he
arranged the Ambassador's conversation, the promises
he had made, in phrases of maximum effectiveness.
He found a group of workmen busy in the lobby of
the apartment house , mixing tubs of cement and plas
ter. It was repair, not restoration. The marble panels
that had fallen from the walls during the earthquake
had all been stolen , said Gigi . There would be nothing
but stucco now. When Corde opened the street door, of
wrought iron and glass , loanna was on the watch
behind the fourfold window of her hutch. Her cheeks
were like cold-storage apples, a bandanna was knotted
under her chin, she had the shape of a bale. Although
she reported on a regular schedule to securitate, she
seemed nevertheless to consider herself one of the
Rareshes , a member of the family . She held on to that .

Minna's husband was family, too, of course; but be
cause he and Ioanna had no common language , she
reserved a special look of pity for him , as if he were
mentally retarded . As he passed her window, he
stooped a little, lifting several of his gloved fingers to
his hat brim. Idiot is as idiot does. She thought him
idiotic? Somebody should .
Tanti Gigi had taken Corde down to Joanna's quar
ters on a courtesy call (peculiar forms of protocol, in
Eastern Europe) , so he knew what was inside. On the
walls of the tiny alcove above her head hung official
portraits of the dictator and his wife . Nearby was a
picture of the beautiful Nadia Comaneci, who didn't
need the support of the solid earth and preferred to live
in the air, like a Chagall bride. There was also an icon
painted on glass with a full flowing brush-red , green
and gilt. In this one, Elijah drove into heaven with two
horses while saints and angels cried hosannah. By
Ioanna's bedside, in the place of honor, was a photo
graph of Valeri a , the Doamna Doctor. Thirty years
ago, Ioanna had been the Doamna Doctor's house
maid. She was devoted to Valeria, no doubt about it,
but she had to be paid off. Whenever Valeria went
abroad, Ioanna's name was high on her shopping list.
She was one of those for whom dress materials had to
be bought, chocolates, bottles of Arpege , panty hose
(the biggest size) . All this was depicted as affection.
And it was affection, who said it wasn't? It was both
affection and payola . So there was Ioanna, big on
emotion, loyal to the family, fully infonned, very
potent, dangerous to neglect. The bale figure, the
scarlet pippin cheeks, the slow heaving of the big
behind, the efficiency of her black-stockinged thick
legs, the sincerely pitying face--(;orde had taken full
note of all of these . The concierge protected, loved and
blackmailed the old sisters. How to interpret this?
"They that have power to hurt and will do none
. . . they are the lords and owners of their faces." No ,
80 SAUL BELLOW
Shakespeare wasn't thinking of any Joanna; he had
great souls in mind, nobility. But Gigi and Minna and
others had assured Corde that the concierge really
loved Valeria. He believed them ("I'll buy that"). She
was a blackmailer, but she also gave her heart. For
there was a love community of women here. The
matriarch was Valeria. Joanna was a member in good
standing.
This apartment was the center of an extended femi
nine hierarchy. There was Tanti Gigi . She had gone to
London in the twenties and came back a Mayfair moth
in flapper dresses and costume jewelry, covered with
eye makeup and speaking Beatrix Potter English . She
was Little Sister, at Valeria's right hand. Then there
was Minna , in America, but figuring prominently ;
distance made no difference , even Science didn't; she
was a full, willing member and a prominent one. Other
members were Viorica, Doina, Cornelia, even Serbian
Vlada in Chicago . Vlada in chemistry and Minna in
astronomy, both belonged to this emotional union. The
ladies consulted Valeria about their husbands, their
children, their careers , took her advice in matters of
love , education , religion. They made over clothing for
one another, raised and lowered hems, repaired zip
pers, came to sickbeds, waited in queues. There was a
small male auxiliary, also. Mihai Petrescu , who had
been Valeria's politruk in the Ministry, the Party's
watchdog , was in it . He seemed, like Joanna, to work
both sides of the street . No outsider could understand
these multiple roles and Chinese intricacies. It was
beyond Corde , certainly . It was not the American kind
of loyalty-duplicity; in America the emotions were
different somehow, perhaps thinner. Here you led a
crypto-emotional life in the shadow of the Party and
the State. You had no personal rights , but on the other
hand , the claims of feeling were more fully acknowl
edged.
He entered the elevator. The thing was made like a
china cabinet, and because it knocked when it was in
use , you heard a frail wooden echo inside. They had

such elevators everywhere in Europe , in buildings of
the Haussmann type , had them in Warsaw and in
Belgrade , too, these imitated vestiges of bourgeois
Paris.
He rose to the fifth floor. The talk with the genteel
Ambassador , the American papers, the walk home,
had stirred him through and through . It seemed to him
that he had built up a life of strong mental excitement.
Minna, who had been watching at the window, let him
in and said, "Why did you walk? They should have sent
you home in a car."
"No one thought of it ."
"They've done a tracheotomy," said Minna.
"Who has? Oh, I see. I thought they would ask you . "
"Dr. Moldovanu said last week that they probably
would have to. Well , they did it. It went well, he said. It
should help."
"Did he talk to you about a visit? What are the
chances?"
"I couldn't discuss that with him on the phone . He
recommended it to the Colonel, that I'm sure of.
Speaking as her doctor, he said it would help my
mother's chances of recovery if she could see me . . . . "
"The Colonel doesn't pay much attention to the

doctors. I'd be surprised if Moldovanu mentioned it to
him a second time. "
"They're all scared. Yes , I think you're right. "
Corde and Minna stood talking i n the parlor. The
peeling, swelling leather armchairs were uninviting.
You didn't willingly sit down in them. Big medical
volumes from Dr. Cushing's Boston were stacked on
the shelves behind the telephone. Corde, too, felt out
of date, like the chairs.
"What happened at the embassy? Did you talk to
that man Milancey?"
"I was taken to the Ambassador."
"You are kidding! How unusual."
"He'd seen my letter. "
82 SAUL B ELLOW
"What's he like?"
"Well, he's black. He's handsome. He's a career
diplomat. He thought it might help to talk to the
Minister of Health. I suppose the M of H runs
the hospitals," said Corde. "Well , they've done the
tracheotomy. . : . " They've peeled those big tapes
from her face, he thought. Those were gone, anyway.
To him they were especially oppressive.
"I'll have to ask my contacts about the Minister of
Health. And write a note to the Ambassador. Albert, I
talked to the lady who has a relationship with Dr.
Gherea . I told you, didn't I, that I met her once in
Switzerland? She remembered me. In fact, she knew all
about my mother. Everybody is talking about it, all
over town. I offered to go to Gherea's hospital myself
to ask him to examine her. But do you know what the
woman said? She said how much Gherea owed both my
parents. She was very warm , she talked to me with real
feeling. I think she'll arrange it all."
"Let her. She sounds like a good woman."
"Albert, I want to show you a photograph of Ghe
rea. Tanti Gigi found it in a magazine . . . . What do
you think?"
The man was stout, hairless. His mouth was set
between determined swe llings. He was immediately
there : that's him.
"I'd say he was a very nice man to have in your
comer. I wouldn't be happy to see him on the other
fellow's side. There are plenty of pusses like that in
Chicago. But if he's so big and important, maybe he
can do something about the Colonel."
"Should I talk to him about that?"
"If I were you, I wouldn't go to this particular man
with tears in my eyes . Skip the emotions, that's my
hunch. If he's like the tough guys he reminds me
of . . . It's his trade to scrape tumors out of people's
brains. "
"So was i t m y father's . "
"From what I hear, your Communist surgeon father
got on his knees and prayed before he started cutting.
Does this guy look like he sinks to his knees? Didn't
you say he socks his anesthetist in the jaw if he crosses
him?"
"I'll phone the woman back and ask whether Gherea
might try with the Colonel. This is the sixth day I
haven't seen my mother."
Without expecting Minna to follow what h e was
saying (she had too much on her mind; she only wanted
to hear the sound of his voice , reassuring if only in the
depth of its tones) , Corde observed that here was
another case of humane cooperation among women in
a Communist society. Gigi insisted that Gherea loved
his lady friend. Maybe he did. These tough guys always
made exceptions. Hitler had had Eva Braun. People in
reduced emotional circumstances set their affections on
something or other. They were pitted against Eros
against the universe . Total misanthropes, true, absolute
ones, were probably as rare as saints. He was trying to
divert Minna . She wasn't listening, only staring. Con
centration made her face severe. This happened also
when she was doing science. With Corde Minna was
often cheerful and childlike. When he pleased her, she
might jump up aild down and clap her hands like a
small girl. But when she worked she was a different
person entirely. She sat in her corner hours on end with
a pad and pencil , writing symbols, her face turned
downward, the upper lip lengthened, the chin com
pressed and dented. She was not an observer; if she had
been one she might never have married a man with
such a round bare crown and the stare of a Welsh
prophet (his own image-it was the eyes he was think
ing of) . Until now she had had little interest in psychol
ogy. Her mother was the psychiatrist; she left all that to
her. But now she was forced to study people. He
wondered what her powerful intelligence would make
of them--of him. He had said often enough that she'd
have to come down to earth one day. Not much of a
prediction. He was sorry for the satisfaction he had
84 SAUL BELLOW
taken in making it. How often people had told him that
sooner or later he'd have to come down to earth. Well,
here she was, anyway , with everybody else , and fight
ing with childlike passion . "Why do I have to go to
Gherea? He should have come to me. "
She said this again. "He was a peasant kid with
talent. Where would he have been without this family?
Even his lady friend says it. My parents took him into
the house . He lived right here. My father made him a
neurosurgeon . Gherea has never trained anybody. He
keeps his monopoly . "
"Well, i f t h e clot turns out t o b e operable, h e may
move Valeria to his hospital . If he should decide that it
was medically necessary, how could the Colonel stop
him?"
This was nothing but sophistry, clever comfort,
holding the line. Surgery was unthinkable ; you couldn't
administer an anesthetic if the respiratory center was
knocked out. If Gherea was coming to examine Vale
ria, he had almost certainly discussed the case with Dr.
Moldovanu. Hopeless. Anyway, the brain surgeon
would have a look at the X-rays, go through all the
motions. He'd do that with King Kong delicacy, be
cause his lady wanted the gestures made. It came under
the heading of feminine boor-control. But it did Minna
good to be angry. Corde himself was angry and trying
to increase his anger with people in Chicago who were
at this moment trying to do him in-with his cousin
Max, for instance. Max was in the courtroom carrying
on like John Barrymore in Counsellor-at-Law. You
could almost see the old movies on which he had
formed his character. Corde had studied the geology of
his cousin's soul and identified the fossil remains.
Anger was better. In passivity you only deteriorated.
Minna said , "I've been so long in the States that I
forgot how things are here. We made such fun of
Valeria and her shopping lists , but look how people
have to dress . The women are so depressed . They have
no food , and there's nothing to wear. One year I
washed and ironed the same blouse every night; it was
all there was. Now I keep thinking of all the items I
could have brought from Chicago . Like the navy dress
with the white. I should have left a set of keys with
Vlada. "
"There was n o time for keys. I ' l l leave m y things
here , except for this suit to fly back in."
"I'll ask Gigi if Professor Voynich will take your
things."
"Better wait till Vlada arrives . She can't bring him to
the States, I suppose."
"I'm not sure he wants to go. " _
"Start a new life? I suppose not. I'd hate it. It's time
to stay put, for better or for worse. Voynich said he'd
take me for a walk. I'd like to get out, see the city. "
"Maybe his French i s too rusty, and he feels awk
ward. He was a social democrat and had a bad time, not
much pension. Wait a few days and Vlada will take you .
She has to talk to you anyway about the article you're
supposed to write with Sam Beech. "
"I've by no means decided. "
"Why not? Beech is brilliant. You shouldn't refuse.
He's a great man. "
Minna looked u p to great men. She didn't look down
on her husband; she didn't quite understand what he
was after. But she preferred looking up, definitely.
That Corde's articles were approved by an eminent
man of science was important to Minna. Now she knew
what to think of his critics. The articles themselves
hadn't held her interest. Doing her best, she had rattled
through the pages while he watched with a certain
sympathy-even with envy. Why should slums, guns,
drugs, jails, politics , intrigues, disorders matter? Leav
ing Hell, Dante saw the stars again. Minna saw them all
the time. Mason had once said that his new aunt was
charming but a little spacy. Uncle Albert was the
worldly one, who was supposed to give guidance and
support here below. He had come to Europe to inter
pose himself between Minna and this bughouse coun-
86 SAUL BELWW
try. For clearly the guys in charge were psychopaths.
There were no rational grounds for what they did.
But Uncle Albert was not the worldly one, either.
Max and Mason were both agreed that he , Corde ,
wasn't really with it , didn't know the score at all, and
that he deserved to be penalized for meddling, for
interfering with reality as the great majority of Ameri
cans experienced it-to which that majority actually
sacrificed itself. As if everybody were saying, "This is
life , this is what I give myself to. There is no other deal.
No holding back, go with the rest. " Then a man like
Corde came haunting around. He would never put his
chips on the mortal roulette squares, good enough for
everybody else. Not on dollars , not on whiskey, not on
sexual embraces-but on what? On Swedenborg's an
gels , maybe? (Swedenborg was Uncle Albert's own
addition . ) Then Corde remembered how in the office
he had wanted to open his heart to Mason , to tell him
that under the present manner of interpretation people
were shadows to one another, and shadows within
shadows , to suggest that these appalling shadows con
demned our habitual manner of interpretation . Grant
this premise and . . . But the kid would never have
listened to this. In his opinion (his portion of the
prevailing chaos, but let's call it opinion), Uncle Albert
was flirting with a delusive philosophy and trying to
have an affair with nonexistent virtues. Mason's state
ment would have been, " Uncle , you're unreal, you're
out of it . " And Corde , giving in to anger, might have
said, "I'm talking straight. Try to listen." But Mason
wouldn't-he couldn't. And now he was allied with a
longtime ill-wisher. He and Cousin Max would fix
Uncle Albert's wagon.
" . . . And in my opinion, " Minna was saying, "it
would be excellent to work with a person like Beech.
Excellent . "
To bring m e within the bounds o f higher sanity. Take
sanctuary with science .
Like Gigi, Minna was assuming her mother's tone
and some of her ways. Well , Valeria's was a role too
valuable to lose. It should be filled, no denying that.
Minna played it with greater authority than Gigi.
Corde had become attached to Gigi-her distracted,
flustered charm, her classic straight nose and full
Egyptian eyes. Even the permanent wave , gone wrong
at the back. He liked the old girl a lot. As for her, she
had noted how he tended the cyclamens. He watered
them from beneath, setting the pots in bowls of water.
She said to him, "There is not much to offer you. The
one thing we can be lavish of is these flowers." He
wondered what it might mean about him as a "serious
adult" that the flowers should claim so much of his
attention.
He mentioned to Minna that Dewey Spangler was in
town.
"I've forgotten who he is-remind me . "
"You saw him on Face the Nation, don't you remem
ber? My buddy from way back. The international
celebrity. The Washington columnist . "
"He isn't one o f the ones I've met."
"No. "
"What's h e doing here?''
"He's making one of his sweeps of Europe to gather
information. I suppose he'll write a series of pieces
about the Communist countries. "
"Seeing him would make a change for you. You have
to sit here day after day . "
"I've been thinking-he must have influence i n high
places. "
"Is h e s o important?"
"In his league, yes. The Ambassador thought so ,
too. He'll probably have dinner with the dictator. The
dictator is another publicity genius, like my cousin
Maxie Detillion. Everybody says how progressive and
liberal he is. "
Minna raised her eyes t o the ceiling fixture t o warn
against listening devices. But Corde had been whisper
ing. She said, "Would your friend put in a word . . . ?"
88 SAUL BELLOW
"Who, Spangler? It can't hurt to ask . . . . Why don't
we go to the room and have a drink. It feels like drink
time . "
"You have a packet of mail from Chicago . It's
waiting on the table . "
This gave him a start. H e had fretted because there
was no news from Chicago. Now it was here he wanted
no part of it . He decided immediately to put off
opening the packet . "From Miss Parson?"
"It looks like it . "
"Well , let's have our drink. "
He avoided looking too closely a t his wife. The
tubercular whiteness of her face upset him. Her big
shocked eyes were immobile , her lower lip was in
drawn , and she was gaunt, stiff. In a single week even
her fingers had lost flesh, so that the joints and the nails
stood out.
Shortly after they were married, one of Corde's
academic friends had congratulated him, saying, "Do
you remember that old piece of business from probabil
ity theory, that if a million monkeys jumped up and
down on the keys of typewriters for a million years one
of them would compose Paradise Lost? Well, you were
like that with the ladies. You jumped up and down and
you came up with a masterpiece. "
Corde had a mild reflective way o f looking at the
ground between his feet, his hands gathered behind his
back, when people took witty cuts at him . "More like
Paradise Regained, " was his answer. Why was he
supposed to have been a wild ladies' man? In others,
much greater sexual irregularities weren't even noticed.
It was his serious air that made him conspicuous. He
looked moral , gazing Socratically at the ground with
large eyes while people teased him about jumping
monkeys. Well, he had only himself to blame. If he was
going to look so earnest , let him be earnest in earnest.
About Minna he was earnest.
"Christ! Miss Parson," he said.
"I thought you were waiting for mail. "
"I was waiting. But facing it is something else."

"You can open it after lunch, if you aren't up to it."
He wasn't up to it at all. He had a stitch , a cramp,
thinking about it. But now the telephone began to ring.
There was a series of calls. The first was for him. On
behalf of Dewey Spangler, the Ambassador's secretary
inquired whether Mr. Corde was available to meet him
at the Intercontinental. Mr. Spangler would send his
car at three o'clock. For Minna's information, Corde
repeated , "Mr. Spangler? Drinks at three? Just a
moment , please. " He covered the mouthpiece, waiting.
"Of course . Of course. Go," said Minna.
"Tell Mr. Spangler that I'll be waiting."
The next call was from Dr. Gherea's obliging la<;ly
friend. How decent of her! Her message (there were no
short conversations in the Balkans) took twenty min
utes to deliver; final arrangements had been made for
the consultation. Dr. Moldovanu would phone her
about it at ten o'clock tomorrow to report Gherea's
opinion.
"That's what we wanted," said Corde , "your old
man's protege . "
From the Chicago packet, which h e opened with a
sigh , he extracted a letter from his sister Elfrida. He
galloped through it to see what it was about and then
went back and studied it in detail. She was a subtle and
tactful woman , good old Elfrida. She might have low
tastes in men (that , unfortunately was common), but
she was well-bred. First she wanted to know how
Valeria was. She had great respect for Valeria . "That's
a superior, dignified woman, not like us mixed hybrid
Frenchies from the Midwest." Elfrida , too, had come
to England last spring. In London ,one night, Corde had
given all the ladies dinner at the Etoile-sometimes he
though� he could live happily ever after on Charlotte
Street. · Elfrida's letter was particularly circumspect.
She was damn careful with him. The word "fond"
occurred several times. Why was that necessary? He
and his sister loved each oth �r; the "fond" was trivial.
90 SAUL BELLOW
Maybe it needed special emphasis because Corde had
added lately to her burdens. He was temporarily
humiliatingly-in the Mason category, a troublemaker.
So she wanted to assure him that (like Mason!) he had
not lost her love. Elfrida had always been gentle with
her brother. For his part, Corde had always tried to
protect Elfrida, which aggravated Mason's resentment.
Elfrida ought not to have had such a turbulent, fanati
cal son. She ought not to have married such a bully as
Zaehner, either. That was her own vulgar streak. But
of course Elfrida had no desire for her brother's
protection. Nor for his critical analysis , thank you.
Naturally, both father and son knew exactly what
Corde thought of them. And now by his extreme
queerness Mason made an exclusive claim on his
mother-but Corde disliked all this psychology. Under
standing was at bottom very tiresome.
Elfrida's letter was in part an offering. She wanted to
convey affection and kindness to Minna. She did it with
a sort of looping, rambling naive charm, not strictly
literate, with feminine flourishes. Indirectly she ap
pealed to her brother not to blame her for Mason's
behavior, and spoke of "this admittedly difficult stage
in Mason's maturing process. " He didn't expect a
mother to condemn her son. But what did she think
existence was, dear girl? How she chose her tones was
very odd. In one passage she was soft, in another
inappropriately loud. Funny dynamics. She could be
hardheaded enough when it was necessary. She was an
excellent money manager. One of her paragraphs re
ferred to the difficulties that Paine Webber was having
with its computers. She was afraid that they might have
lost track of her securities . "I never understood the
printouts they sent. How could I? Electronics could
make a beggar of me ."
Zaehner had left her rich . He had had a big practice ,
and he used to enjoy quoting a famous Texas lawyer:
"I'm just as interested in the poor and oppressed as
Clarence Darrow was. If they aren't poor when I meet
them, they are when I'm through with 'em . "
A few days before the arrival of Gigi's wire , Corde
had had a long talk with his sister.
Their meeting came before him now (the sun entered
Minna's room, and its walls were relined with warm
winter light). Like a colored picture , a carelessly insert
ed slide , Elfrida's parlor went back and forth, some
what crooked, and then, right side up and better
focused , he saw his sister Elfrida. If Corde's love for
Elfrida had an extreme, almost exaggerated character,
it was perhaps because she was curiously put together
very slender at the top, with a smooth dark head, and
wide in the hips , a narrow profile combined with broad
femininity. Her skin was imperfect, pitted on the
cheekbones, but it was smooth in the hollows. She had
the big mouth of a shouting comedienne and a talent
for farcical gestures--s he would make exaggerated
gestures if she trusted you enough to let herself go. Her
breath was acrid with tobacco, perfumed with lipstick;
her teeth were irregular and spotty. Her air was that of
a woman who had given in to disappointment and ruin.
"Oh , to hell with it all !" This was conveyed, however,
with a certain cleverness , ruefully amiable and warm.
For of course she hadn't withdrawn the feminine claims
of a younger woman. "American gals" seldom did. In
their fifties they were still "dating." Corde didn't care
to be well informed about these dates. She was seeing
Stan Sorokin, Judge Sorokin, some years her junior.
He courted her, pursued her, although since her hus
band's death three years ago she seemed to have
become swarthier, more lined. But through all the
transformations of middle age, the point of her upper
lip, that strangely communicative tip, told you (told her
brother, at least) what sort of woman she was-patient
in disappointment, skeptical, practical , good access to
her heart, if you knew where to look. It was all in the
rising point of the lip.
92 SAUL BELLOW
Elfrida lived in an expensive hotel apartment near
the "Magnificent Mile ," just east of Water Tower
Place. Corde disliked the commercial and promotional
smoothness of the neighborhood, the showiness of the
skyscrapers , the Bond Street and Rue de Ia Paix
connections. "The Malignant Mammonism of the Mag
nificent Mile ," he said to his sister. But Elfrida
wouldn't acknowledge that it was the restaurants, the
name hairdressers, the celebrities in the streets, that
attracted her. She needed action, she insisted that
she was happiest in a hotel apartment. Their father
had been a hotel man. The Cordes had lived for years
in a huge old apartment on Sheridan Road, but she
preferred to remember the razzle-dazzle hotel life,
the banquets , the big kitchens, the jazz bands, the bar
gossip, and she told people , with a satisfaction her
brother didn't share , "We were a pair of hotel brats . "
He was more apt t o recall the drunks, freaks , noise
makers, check-kiters, the football deadheads, the sales
men and other business dumdums.
She and Zaehner had moved to the suburbs for
Mason's sake. "You see how well that worked. " She
said to Corde, "When I'm out of sorts it comforts me
that there are people down in the lobby. I don't have to
face an empty lawn when my heart is troubled. Thank
God I unloaded that big pretentious house. "
This was her way o f saying that living in Lake Forest
had been Zaehner's idea. She seldom spoke frankly
to Corde about her husband. The late Zaehner's atti
tude towards her brother had embarrassed her. She was
still decently covering up-foolish wifeliness, Corde
thought. There was too much there for tact to cover.
Zaehner was tough. His face was charged with male
strength in all the forms admired in Chicago. A big
fellow, he was forceful, smart, cynical , political, rich,
and he had no use for those who weren't. In the city
that worked, he was one of those who gave people the
works. So he despised his brother-in-law, a man large
enough to be forceful , smart enough to be rich , proud
enough to be contemptuous. To him Corde was a
cop-out , a snob. From his side, Corde was careful to
make no trouble for his sister. He let himself be baited ,
kept to his rule never to tangle with Zaehner. He held
aloof, but of course there was tacit comment. The
situation was complicated by the fact that in some
respects Corde had liked his brother-in-law. He en
joyed his growling wit, his unpressed look, his practical
jokes. (Zaehner would send call girls to visit his pals in
the hospital , to cock-tease politicians and lawyers just
out of the operating room. ) Corde told Minna,
"Zaehner was a Lyndon Johnson type of bully. When
he turned away seven-eighths of his face but was still
looking at you-watch out !" Lyndon Johnson was very
remote from Minna . She gave Corde a dimpled smile,
but he had learned that these smiles (affectionate,
intimate, "steal your heart away") didn't signify under
standing, only confidence that her husband , if she
asked him to explain , could give her his grounds, would
show why his remark deserved her smile. He would lay
out the whole American scene, spelling out the similari
ties he saw between the late Zaehner and the late
President: native sons, men of power, devoid of cul
ture, lovers of money, fearlessly insolent. Spelling it all
out was a labor. Moreover, none of this meant much to
her. Besides, she had no time to listen ; she was
intensely elsewhere. Nevertheless, she sent him a de
lightful signal.
So Elfrida had asked him to come , largely because of
Mason but also out of sisterly concern, and he was in
her apartment, sinking into one of her slipcovered
chairs. Her small rooms were over-decorated; she had
brought too much stuff with her from the suburbs. On
the wall over the sofa were three schlocky watercolors
of the Place Vendome. They belonged in a hospital
thrift shop , but they were a Paris gift from Zaehner.
Elfrida wasted no time. Handing· Corde a martini
94 SAUL BELLOW
and taking her English Ovals, the ashtray and matches
into her lap, she began. "Let's see if we can get
everything sorted , about you and Mason. "
"And Max . "
"Yes, Max . He's a nasty bastard. I always warned
you about Cousin Detillion. I feel very sorry, Albert,
for the heat you're getting."
"Although you'd say I brought it on myself, a good
part of it . "
"Well , I can't blame Mason o n you. Nor Maxie. He
always was repulsive. But there were things you could
have avoided . You didn't need to publish those articles
just before the trial . And then there's the trial itself."
"Well, there was a boy murdered. I didn't have much
choice. There's also the young wife . "
"But did you have to push so hard?"
"I didn't, not all that hard. The alternative was to
accept the death. Just blame the urban situation-hot
night, kid pushed out of a window. I could have let it all
fade away, and be philosophical about it."
"We don't need to · go into that. You had your
reasons. "
"Of course. You want m e t o explain why there's a
warrant out for Mason's arrest. "
"Yes, that's it. Why is there? Did you have anything
to do with it?"
"Why would I? To stoke up the publicity fires for
Cousin Maxie? I'm getting plenty of heat as it is. You
just said it: The facts are in the papers-the real facts,
for a change . Grady went before a grand jury and
complained that Mason had raised hell with his witness
es. You can't expect a prosecutor to let the kid ruin his
case . Hasn't he told you about this himself?"
"Mason?"
"He wouldn't have , naturally. But he threatened
those street characters. He said he'd get 'em . "
Elfrida said, "It's hard to imagine tough black street
people being intimidated by skinny Mason. I can't
picture that that Lake Forest schoolboy actually fired a
gun at anybody. Do you believe that, Albert?"
"Not necessarily. But I don't necessarily disbelieve
it. He's in real earnest about his pal Ebry. By working
in the restaurant kitchen , he got to be an honorary
black. He cornered those witnesses . . . . "
"They only came out of the woodwork to claim the

reward . "
Corde said, "One o f them had the dead boy's
wedding ring. The prostitute asked him to keep it for
her. The other fellow put Ebry up that night, and Ebry
told him he was in trouble. Mason warned those two.
They took fright. . . . "
"Yes," said Elfrida. "That's what I read in the
papers. They were shot at, got scared , and hid them
selves." '·
"Without them, Grady had no case. He sent the

plainclothesmen into the projects to flush them out,
one from Cabrini Green, the other from Robert Taylor
Homes. They were taken in custody . . . . "
"Can you see Mason sticking a gun in his pocket and
going out at night to shoot anybody?"
"They're capable of making it all up, sure. If shots
were fired-a doubtful proposition-somebody else
might have fired them. There are enough guns around,
and plenty of people out to get people. There's an
armed population in the city with all kinds of weapons
-not just Saturday night specials but machine guns,
grenades. I wouldn't be surprised by rockets. Still,
Mason did threaten the witnesses, gang style , that does
seem to be a fact; and they didn't turn up at the trial ,
another fact. "
Elfrida pulled back strands that had escaped from the
tight black bonds of hair. Her brother almost imagined
that the tightness helped her to keep her head in
position . With a hint of strain or faintness, Elfrida
confessed, "I don't follow . . . . He is a little bastard ,
isn't he. "
;:,AUL I:SELLOW
"I wouldn't exaggerate," said Corde. "But what's he
gone into hiding for? He's not exactly a hunted man.
Obstructing justice isn't such a big deal in this case. He
must be thrilled to pieces to be a fugitive. It's a terrific
luxury for a kid like Mason. You comer two street
people. You deliver a death threat. They take you
seriously-that's a real thrill . It means you're pretty
dose to being black yourself. You don't have to be
ashamed of your white skin . "
" Ah , well, I don't have a comer o n troubles. You've
got your O'i't"ll , Albert . "
Wrapped i n his coat at Valeria's table, his chair
tipped back, Corde reconstructed parts of this conver
sation. His memory was exceptionally clear. And he
could see what a problem he had become to his sister.
The last thing she wanted was the sort of "intelligent"
discussion he specialized in . There were times when
a humoring-the-mad look passed over her face. He
knew his sister's mind as he knew her long neck ,
her characteristic dark female bittersweet fragrance.
Mason might be pla�ing a modem version of Tom
Sawyer and Nigger Jim. It had an especially nasty twist
now. Yes , but what game was Uncle Albert playing?
"You must have discussed this \\ith somebody in the
firm. I'd tum it over to Zaehner, Notkin and Delff if I
were you . "
"Yes , I've talked i t over \\ith Moe Delff. H e savs the
indictment won't hold up, the court v.ill dismiss it. But
Mason has to surrender first, so I can put up a bond.
Moe "'ill go to the police \\ith him. When it comes up
for a hearing, Moe thinks the court \\ill give your friend
Grady hell for rushing to the grand jury. "
"Is this all Delff?'" Corde asked.
He was sounding her out about Judge Sorokin . He
shouldn't have done this . It was not altogether brother
ly amiability. She probably didn't like it. By the lower
ing of her eyes she confirmed his hunch. Nevertheless
he went on. "I assume you've double-checked this
\lritb Sorokin . .
,
Sorokin was a minor magistrate, a former precinct
captain who owed his position to the Machine . There
were officials in Chicago who didn't much mind being
owned. Everybody had to be vetted by the Machine .
You didn't get on the ballot unless the Machine put you
there. Within the Machine, however, relations were
hierarchical and feudal, not necessarily servile. Corde
had dealt with this in his articles and Sorokin himself
had been one of his informants . Corde liked him , on
the whole. Alderman Siblish was said to have Sorokin
in his pocket, yes , but the man was cheerful , boyishly
good-natured. No really dirty work came his way; he
wasn't important enough for that. He had risen from
the North Side streets . Wounded at Omaha Beach
(Purple Heart) , he was far from disabled. For recrea
tion he took Outward Bound survival trips, parachuting
from helicopters into the trackless wild. Obviously
Elfrida liked Sorokin, but she assumed that her broth
er, that great reader, journalist, highbrow professor,
dean , and intellectual, took a dim view of the Judge,
saw him as another Zaehner. Well, she preferred low
Chicago male company, people like her own father, a
man about town who used to take her to prizefights and
nightclubs. Corde's tastes were different altogether.
He'd been unwilling to go to the fights with Dad.
"Naturally , I talked it over with Stan Sorokin. Can
you blame me? Every morning the papers are at the
door. My heart races so , I can't swallow my coffee . It
must be even worse for you, reading them."
"They seldom get anything right . "
"But how irritating it must be. I'm sure your college
isn't happy about it, either . "
"So far they've be e n civilized. I've been the emotion
al party. They haven't much use for that. They'd prefer
me to be cool. Anyway, they behave like gentlemen.
No, they aren't happy-the circus it's turned into, with
the Dean's nephew and the Dean's cousin Maxie, the
student newspaper, the leftover Lefties of the sixties.
Even the Spartacus Youth League from the thirties."
98 SAUL BELLOW
"But Mason, most of all . "
Examining his behavior now, Corde thought he had
done fairly well on the whole .
"You asked me to stop in on my way home,
Elfrida . . . . "
"That's right. "
" I didn't invite myself. I n fact , I've stayed away
deliberately. But I didn't come and complain about
Mason . . . . "
"That's true , Albert. . . . I'm sure it is . I believe it.
There is an emotional problem. I think Mason bas been
trying to get at you like this because he wasn't able to
reach you otherwise. "
So i t was to be a session o f suburban maternal
psychology. He had no use at all for that stuff, but he
saw no way to stop it. As he drank his martini, be tuned
out, now and again. But if he paid little attention to her
words , he listened closely to the sound of her voice ,
watched her face. She was warm of heart, naturally
warm. She spoke of schools and teachers, of psychia
trists, of the loneliness of an only child and the prob
lems of coping with a father like Zaehner, of Mason's
lack of success with peer friendships and the effects of
marijuana on the brain ("Recent studies show . . . " ) .
Thank heavens Mason didn't have a serious drug
problem. Composed, turning the stem of the martini
glass , looking into the drink and again at Elfrida's
imperfect skin, Corde felt the tidy parlor of the hotel
apartment enclosing him-paneled white walls, white
silk lampshades, upholstered restfulness, thick carpet
ing, porcelain cockatoos on the mantel, ornaments of
Venetian glass and Meissen, the phony Place Vendome
watercolors, the enormous Hancock Tower with
crossed trusses shutting off the westward view-and
asked himself where the depth level was . Not in the
ladies'-magazine pedagogy or the Lake Forest psychia
try, but in the natural warmth of his sister. In him it was
represented if you liked by his feeling for Elfrida-for
the length and smoothness of her head, the Vidal
Sassoon dye job , the damaged skin, the slender nose
with its dark nostrils, the feminized tobacco flavor, her
sweet-and-acrid fragrance. All these particulars, the
apperceptive mass of a lifetime. Yes, she was heavy in
the thighs, big in the hips. There was a perennially
strange ultra-familiar contrast between the elongated
upper body, the upstream, and the broad estuary of the
lower half, the lower flow of womanliness. The depth
level he was looking for was in the heat that came from
her patchy face, from the art with which she was
painted about the eyes, and even from the memories of
odors, some of them undoubtedly sexual in origin
from an aching sort of personal history. Perhaps he
loved the point of her upper lip most of all. He thought
this to be a reading of true feelings and no mere
projection. These times we live in give us foolish
thoughts to think, dead categories of intellect and
words that get us nowhere. It was just these words and
categories that made the setting of a real depth level so
important. I disagree with my misshapen old sister, we
can't talk to each other, yet we have something palpa
ble between us. Mason, somewhere , is aware of this
and he doesn't like it. She loves him most, as is quite
natural, but that's not enough for him. Maybe he's
afraid that I may do him out of his legacy, if she's
named me executor. But she's surely too smart to do
that. My record with money is bad. I let Detillion
swindle me. And I assume the Mason problem comes
down to money, somewhere along the line. The form
Mason's ambition has taken is downward, for the
present. It's as that clever Frenchman said: there's
positive transcendence and there's the negative kind.
(Corde had stopped thirty years ago trying to discuss
theories with Elfrida.) But when Mason's downward
ambition stops--and where can it lead?-he'll want his
dough. She'll die, he'll get it. He's waiting for that.
Elfrida would not be shocked by these parricidal
thoughts. Why should she be? If she hadn't read
Proust's "Filial Sentiments of a Parricide," she had
100 SAUL BELLOW
been married to Mason Zaehner, who had practiced
law on La Salle Street for four decades. She had no
need of Proust or Freud or Krafft-Ebing or Balzac or
Aristophanes. Chicago had it all.
Zaehner the secretive lawyer was big on candor, in a
showmanly way. He liked a bold statement over a
drink, as when he told Corde that he lived by tipping
over garbage cans. "Lived" was his euphemism for the
crushing fees he charged . Sometimes he was more
Darwinian-the struggle for existence in the Loop
jungle. Some jungle! Who were the lions and tigers? It
was more like the city dump. Rats were the principal
fauna. And it wasn't Zaehner who struggled for exis
tence ; he arranged for others to do the struggling. And
of course Zaehner sensed how mixed a view his
brother-in-law took of him. He couldn't have missed it.
You didn't have to be terribly deep for that. Corde had
the trick, while keeping his mouth shut, of transmitting
opinions. He looked at you with a newspaperman's
silent irony. Well, Zaehner was affronted by those
opinions. It was people like himself, Zaehner, who
lived the life characteristic of the city and of the
country, who were realistically connected with its oper
ations, its historical position , its power-the actual
American stuff. They were at the center. And who the
fuck did this dud dean think he was!
Anyway, Zaehner died of heart failure on the ex
pressway while driving back to Lake Forest , and he left
a pile of money. And despite her fashionable address
among gay bars and executive dining clubs, in these
streets of canopies, marquees , doormen , Elfrida was
not one of your big spenders. She didn't haunt the
boutiques or wear designer dresses. She was increasing
Zaehner's dollars, preserving them for Mason!
She was talking money to her brother now, saying
that she had been trapped through bad advice with a
conservative portfolio. Interest rates had shot up , the
bonds declined by thirty percent; the gold hedge hadn't
worked, either. About the Paine Webber computers
she was rueful, giving him side glances with her slight,
smiling dark face as if she were telling him that she had
been abused physically, cornered and pinched by gross
people . Corde in his polite way, but restive ("Okay,
okay, enough !"), said , "SEC is watching this minor
Paine Webber mixup, you can be sure. The Wall Street
Journal said it was trivial." But in matters of money she
didn't need his assurances. Sorokin, if she should
decide to marry that virile , sleek-headed, nutria
bearded Marlboro Country judge from the North Side,
would not come into any of the money. But to do him
justice, it didn't appear that he was chasing Elfrida's
dollars.
Holding together the ends of his coat collar against
the chill in Minna's room and looking out now and then
over the bleak Communist capital, or reaching out to
the plum brandy, or feeling the soil under the cycla
mens (as cyclamens loved low temperatures, they were
in heaven here-he should be so beautiful at 48 de
grees F!) , Corde occasionally checked the time on his
wrist. Dewey Spangler's car wasn't due yet, and Corde,
Elfrida's letter filled with lady phrases before him,
continued to reconstruct the last conversation he had
had with her. It was important. And somehow he was
better able to be objective here ; the foreign setting
made for more clarity. Or Valeria, dying.
When Elfrida was done with the money-and most
of their meetings since she was widowed began like this
(the foreground clutter of finance had to be swept
away)-Corde claimed the equal time he was entitled
to . It was inevitable that they should begin immediately
to discuss Maxie Detillion.
Detillion: Why was it that there were people with
whom he, Corde, was so tied that his perception of
them amounted to a bondage? They were drawn to
gether physically, so tightly that he was virtually ab
sorbed by them. With Elfrida , this absorption was
sweet and lucid. But it wasn't always sweet, and liking
had nothing to do with it: he didn't like his cousin. A
102 SAUL BELLOW
kind of hypnotic coalescence was what occurred . Thus
he knew the pores of Detillion's face ; the close serial
waves of his hair descending to a peak felt almost like
his own hair-as he remembered it. In action Max's
eyes were the eyes of a guru or a star of the Ger
man Expressionist movies. When Cousin Max rolled
them, Corde took the sensation into his own eyes.
Detillion had always had a tang of male acid about
him , but now he was beginning to smell like an old
man ; you got a whiff of unaired clothes closets when
he passed by. He had grown side whiskers of macho
wool. Rouault would have wanted to paint Maxie
had put other Maxies into his giant studies of corrupt
men .
In the courtroom, Maxie and Corde would occasion
ally look at each other without speaking. Corde's
presence may have made things harder for Lydia
Lester, whom he had come to protect and support. In
fact he saw that his being there aggravated Max's
sensationalism , made Max more melodramatic. He
sent continual eye messages to the two newspapermen
who covered the trial ("Don't miss this, hear?''). He
did not give the girl a hard time on the witness stand,
because j uries sympathized with young women whose
husbands had been killed. Knowing this, he intended to
be tactful. He did not know that he oppressed her by
wooing her. He wasn't at all aware of it-simply didn't
know what he was doing. It would never have crossed
his mind that she was mourning, sick, shaky , fright
ened . The message he transmitted was that he was
doing his professional best to obtain testimony favor
able to his client, but that when this ordeal was over he
would show her the other side of his nature , which was
tenderly erotic. He sent the same sexual message to all
females from a full heart. The innocence of it had in the
course of the years become clear to Corde-for it was
in a sense innocent----corrupt innocence . Before the
jury, Detillion carne brandishing papers like Joe Mc
Carthy. He was a brandishing man . What he really
flourished was his sex. His once handsome nose was
beginning to look damaged, cartilages blasted , and as
he aged and grew heavier his cheeks thickened , his
color darkened ; he looked leaden , he lost height , his
pelvis widened, his courtroom pacing was slightly lame.
Corde believed he was dying-the old mad blind
despised and dying king.
What was it but intimacy to see Cousin Maxie
Detillion like this? It made no difference that Max cut
him, behaving with stupid, cold, waxen hauteur. To see
someone like this was to enter into his life. Not
necessarily a welcome experience.
Maxie was not a great observer, but it was impossible
to remain unaware of so deep a lifetime interest .
Detillion had always given this a sexual interpretation.
"Albert admired the way I am with women . I was his
role model. "
Elfrida said , "It looks like you'll have Cousin Max
with you at every stage of life . "
Corde smiled. "If I die first , don't let him make my
funeral arrangements. "
"I used t o knock myself out trying t o understand why
you went along with him till he thought he owned you.
And when you broke away, he couldn't get it through
his head. You betrayed him. He's the one with the
evance ."
When Grandfather Detillion died, his property down
in Joliet had been divided among his three grandchil
dren. Under the will, Max was executor of the estate.
Elfrida had gotten her share of the money-Zaehner
saw to that. Zaehner had said to Corde, "What's the
matter with you, anyway; can't you see what's happen
ing? The ground floor is rented to McDonald's ham
burgers. Have you ever gotten a penny out of it?"
"I got tax write-otis. "
"But cash, not one penny, right? He's swindling you.
He's milking the property. The phony expenses he puts
on the books, I spotted them in the first statement he
sent out. When he bought us out he got a two-thirds
104 SAUL B ELLOW
interest , so he controls it all-what else does he do for
you, in the way of business?"
Corde had in fact allowed Cousin Max to make
investments for him. Max had obtained from him vari
ous powers of attorney, as well as an authorization to
trade in securities through the Harris Trust in his name.
In his relations with Detillion (and not only Detillion),
Corde arranged somehow to persuade himself, howev
er great the quirks of those he trusted, that he wasn't
going to be cheated. He had watched Maxie cheating
othe rs-s hifting and hiding assets , outfoxing creditors,
maneuvering to frustrate court orders, claiming pre
posterous tax deductions. For all his shenanigans he
was seldom liquid enough to pay his bills (he _ lived
high) , he could never grab as much as he needed. But
not from me, Corde would tell himself. Max would
never cheat me.
"Let me put it on the line to you, brother
in-law . . . . " Zaehner, masterly, prolonged his scowl ,
silent. Lumps of severity formed at the comers of his
mouth. "Unless you hold your cousin's feet to the fire ,
you'll never see a penny. You must have some idea how
much he screwed you out of."
Corde did have an idea , certainly, but he kept it
shrouded . It belonged to a group of shrouded objects
which he promised himself one day to examine . But on
that day a philosophical light would have to shine.
Otherwise it wouldn't do to remove the shrouds. He
guessed that Max had done him out of something
between two and three hundred thousand dollars. This
conservative estimate he kept to himself.
"Hold his feet to the fire-how?" Corde said.
"Demand an audit. "
"Well , then there'd be a n explosion . . . . "
"You wouldn't be afraid of that character, would
you?"
"I may-be , a little . . . .
"
"I think I understand . . . . It's not personal fear of

your creep cousin, but fear of what will have to come
to light about the relationship. Finding out . . . it
wouldn't make you happy to look at the picture. Did
Max draw your will? Is he going to be in charge when
you kick off?"
"Yes, to both questions."
"Tear it up. Make a new will . "
"I'd have to find another lawyer."
"A sobering thought, yes? Don't worry, I'll suggest a
few safe names . . . . Since you came back to Chicago
to be a perfesser, you and your cousin have used each
other. He guided you around the Near North and
Lincoln Avenue joints, access to the Playboy Mansion,
and broads easy to get. Hard to get rid of, but that's a
different subject. That's what he did for you. What you
did for him was to give him some class. His reputation
was really tacky. Not only that he was a rotten lawyer,
but his dick was just plain hanging out. Then suddenly
he turned into an intellectual. He started dropping
intellectual names. People downtown wanted to punch
him in the face. But that's no use. You want the bottom
line? Detillion is bananas. All you have to do is watch
him dancing, there's your proof. "
In this Zaehner might have been right. On a dance
floor, proud of his technique, Detillion would swing his
wide buttocks with crazy grace , mincing out the Carib
bean rhythms. In his cha-cha-cha, possessed, he had no
eyes for his partner, whom he dominated as a matter of
course, like the ringmaster's mare. It was the spectators
he danced for. Since Corde was a great reader (who
was now convinced that he had read too much, gath
ered too many associations, idled in too many picture
galleries), he frequently saw his performing cousin's
massive , ecstatic face in the Rouault version, a sexual
oppressor of tragic multitudes of women (possibly also
of men) . But Detillion's own image when he was in
action was of course quite different. He was anything
but a screwer of girls. No, he was the agent or
personification of Eros, all aflame , all gold, crimson,
radiant, experiencing divine tumescence , bringing life.
106 SAUL BELLOW
The power to bless womankind was swelling in his
pants . Zaehner said his dick was hanging out. His
brother-in-law put the matter another way. But he had
no intention of discussing Cousin Maxie extensively
with Zaehner.
Corde credited Zaehner with high intelligence. He
didn't feel superior to him. But Zaehner could not bear
hearing Corde's thoughts, and whenever Corde tried to
discuss his ideas, he shut him up. "You've lost me ,
Albert . Can't follow you there. Too mental for me. "
There was verbal deference, but furious contempt in
the modulation of scowl into smile. Yes , this was
another interesting relationship , no doubt about it.
Another shrouded object in Corde's collection. If
Cousin Maxie had affinities with Rouault , Zaehner was
associated by Corde with Hermann Goring. This was
sobering, severe, unfair-a crushing comparison, and
never to be mentioned. Mason senior wore unpressed
chalk-striped suits, his pants were low-slung in the seat,
he had scuffed shoes. He was your informal Chicagoan.
Goring had dressed himself in mountainous medieval
velvet robes; he covered his face with pancake makeup;
gems were his jelly beans. Still there seemed to be a
similarity. Corde, at Valeria's table, tracing the
Zaehner-Goring association to its origins, went back
as far as a certain Mrs. Wooster, an American society
lady in Paris (Rue de Rennes) , who had altered her
elderly, stem look when Goring's name was men
tioned and said, "Why, he was nothing but a teddy
bear. I knew him well. " Until now inflexible, Mrs.
Wooster had smiled with all the sweetness of a
stem woman when she relents, and with this smile
Goring was reconfirmed in Corde's mind as a great
archetype of worldly evil. Zaehner was no great
archetype, but to Elfrida, he also had been a teddy
bear-anything but a beast of the Chicago jungle
dumps .
At all events, Zaehner had kept after Corde and
forced him at last, out of "self-respect," to take action
against Detillion. It came to that. Detillion was ex
posed, was unshrouded .
And so Elfrida was saying to her brother in the
overheated white rooms of Chicago (rooms which by
the completeness of their furnishings, fullness of instal
lation , and convenience , suggested that America had
taken care of most outstanding human needs--what
more did you want?}-was saying, "I should have told
you, Albert, that when you and Cousin Max finally had
your big legal hassle, Cousin Max came all the way out
to Lake Forest to see me-a special trip. He told me he
had to bare his heart to somebody in the family. He
said he didn't deserve to be treated like this. He was
being pushed too hard. Word was getting out. People
were talking around town that he had rooked you,
fucked you up with IRS, and he was incompetent. . . . "
"I didn't push him too hard . We settled out of court.
What was he trying to get out of you?"
"He wanted me to arrange a conference with Mason,
and Mason, as you remember, had just had his first
coronary. Max called and left messages , but I wouldn't
let Mason call back."
"It would have been worth ten thousand bucks to
Max to have Zaehner get him off the hook with me. "
"Max said, 'I'll never forgive what Albert did t o my
image.' "
"His image! And baring his heart! Poor Max. I get
sore at him, but when I look closer or hear what he
says, I tum sorry instead. "
"You must have been. You let him o ff easy. What
kind of settlement was that?"
"I dropped a lot of dough on him. Let's say I was
paying tuition . I had to take a special course ."
"Learning what, dear?"
"Things I should have known fifty years ago. A
postgraduate seminar in boneheadedness and idiocy. "
Corde was trying t o get Elfrida to talk with him i n his
way. She was his sister, she ought to be able to do it.
She ought to be willing.
108 SAUL BELLOW
"Maybe a quarter of a million wasn't tuition
enough."
"I see what you mean. Losing that much dough
didn't make me suffer enough . I'm still an idiot, and I
haven't got the dough to enroll in another course."
Corde's intent was plain. He was sounding out his
sister on the Chicago articles, trying to get her opinion.
Did she see those disturbing pieces as his new venture
in idiocy? He watched her very closely. When her face
darkened , she was flushing. That made her look youth
ful. Then came tension and reticence and made her
look elderly. She was perhaps as sorry for her brother
as he was for Cousin Max. She believed he was a very
strange man. His hang-ups we�e not like other people's
-identifiable neuroses, alcoholism , bragging. Nothing
normal. He had his own most original, incomprehensi
ble way of screwing things up. No, she wasn't going to
give an opinion on his articles. So there he had her
judgment on them. He couldn't deny that it bothered
him, but-he loved his sister just the same. She was
actually miffed with him . She had much to say about
those Chicago articles qut she wouldn't talk. Her black
eyes were critical , wistful , canny and angry. She
seemed to ask why rock the boat-why push so hard,
be so reckless, write so strangely? To Zaehner, Chicago
had been the greatest city in the world , no place like it.
And Corde's father had agreed with Zaehner, no place
like Chicago-big, vital , new, the best! Old Corde, who
had cut a figure here as a big hotel man and public
personality, would have been bitterly annoyed with a
son who knocked Chicago. Of course Elfrida couldn't
approve.
She turned the <;Iiscussion again to Cousin Max. "He
made me a long speech , when he came out to see me.
He walked up and down with his hands behind his
back, spouting about a great evil all around him and
drowning his soul, and how you of all people should
turn up on the wicked side. All right, Albert-Max
mismanaged your money. But you let him do it. And
Mason was a devil to go to him with this ease-l don't
blame you for being sore. But maybe you're being far
too sensitive. I doubt that anybody is really paying
much attention to Max. They can see what a ham he is.
Even if you're down on Chicago, give them some
credit. "
"Did you happen t o see him o n Channel l'wo the
other night?"
On the tube, unexpectedly, Corde had switched on
his cousin. There was Maxie in full color with his
cumulus side whiskers and his face blazing with false
truthfulness. Corde had been astonished to hear his
own name spoken . "Dean Corde , who happens to be
my first cousin . . . " Corde had been greatly offended
by this. Hearing his name loudly spoken , he was
furious. Even now he was angry about it, aware of a
large area of atrocious anger very near. He could
almost touch it. Detillion made charges of racism, he
referred to the college as "a great institution. But its
relations with Affirm ative Action are troubled." He
lied with his eyes and his brows even more than with
words. Corde had to admit that he spoke reasonably
well, in the unnatural style of the Chicago bar�orde
had commented on this in Harper's: "The peculiar,
gentlemanly, high-toned illiteracy of lawyers before the
Bench . . . "
Corde said , "No, I shouldn't be so sensitive about
Max. But he comes every day and sprays the girl and
the family with untreated sewage. It was me that got
her involved, and I feel responsible . . . my family,
after all. Even a stronger person couldn't bear this
publicity circus, but this isn't a strong young woman.
She's inexperienced , she's dazed, and don't forget, the
boy's parents are sitting in the courtroom while Max
comes on, not with her but with Ebry and other
witnesses, about funny sexual practices, and suggesting
hadn't the young man gone out that night with a
1 10 SAUL BELLOW
lascivious purpose . Bringing in group sex and hinting at
kinkiness with all kinds of esoteric kinks. It's too
much . "
"Too much for you, I see. You're very emotional
about it. "
"Well, of course I am, Elfrida. I'm in it. Mason
knocked on her door last September, to tell her that
she'd better not take the stand. "
Elfrida said, "Yes, I think I heard that before. " As
she lowered her eyes , Corde dropped the subject.
Elfrida then said, "I can see why she wants those
people sent to jail. It's perfectly natural. She must feel
she owes it to her husband. "
"Grady says it's stupid of Max to push so hard,
because if she were to break down in front of the jury it
would do his case no good. I almost think Grady is
hoping for it . But somehow she's toughing it out. I
never thought she could. "
"Sorokin's opinion is that Max is making a good
defense, purely on the legal side . "
Corde said, "Sometimes I think that i f Detillion's
prayers had been answered and he had become
ultra-rich . . . "
"Yes . . . ?"
"Then all this psychopathic suffering of his would
have been safely embalmed. He'd be a big giver, a
patron of the opera and symphony, he'd be elected to
all the boards . Nobody would notice how stupid or how
cracked he was. But since he can't even pay his bills, he
has to find a way to dress his disaster presentably . But
this has to be done in public. "
" I get what you're saying," said Elfrida. Her uneasi
ness was deep. She was herself ultra-rich , for one thing.
Her moved and distracted brother might at any mo
ment fall into one of his theorizing fits. He saw how it
was. He would take off from his elevation, from his
butte, in a mad flight of clarity-and heresy. His voice
would be equable , deep, harmonious, not a sign of
fanaticism , and he would say incomprehensible, un-
graspable , glassy , slippery and , finally, terrible, harm
ful things-things that would have revolted their father
and made the late Zaehner look grim. In Elfrida's
opinion Albert didn't know what it was to be moderate ,
he exaggerated everything. But then his love for her
also had an exaggerated character. If she was glad to
have his love , why did she rule out his "exaggerated"
theories? There was a certain amusement in his
question. And then-honestly , now!-was it such a
distorted theory? He was saying that you became an
impregnable monster if you had money, so that if to
begin with you felt yourself to be monstrous you could
build impregnability by making a fortune . Because then
you were a force of nature , although a psychopath. Or
if you were without any persona , then you bought a
persona. And underlying all of thi�orde had had to
fly to Communist Europe and sit in his wife's schoolgirl
room to understand it-underlying the whole of his
recent phase of eccentricity (it wasn't at all eccentric
from within) was his continuing dispute with Elfrida's
husband, the late Zaehner. Contra Zaehner might have
been the true title of those articles on Chicago. He
hadn't been aware of this at first. The first conception
was innocent. Originally period pieces, picturesque ,
charming, nostalgic, his essays somehow got out of
hand. Naturally, he could not expect sympathy from his
sister. She couldn't sympathize without disloyalty to
Zaehner and to her son. Besides , she disagreed.
"Don't you worry , Elfrida ," he had said to her
before he left-meaning that he would not molest her,
would not try to get her to talk his way.
She drew a long, thankful breath, and in her relief
she said to him, "I think you ought to know, Albert,
that Sorokin thinks you were right about Rufus Rid
path. Ridpath really did do his best at the County Jail .
H e was the only one who even tried t o improve
conditions and help the prisoners . And there were
people who might have been out to get him . Sorokin
agrees that he was basically honest . They not only
l lL. �AUL HELWW
ganged up to get rid of him but made sure that he had
no future in politics around here . "
"I don't think Ridpath would ever have run for
office , that would be out of character. But did Sorokin
tell you this? He was the one who sent me to Ridpath in
the first place . "
Elfrida made one o f her faces. Corde understood
exactly what it meant. She said, "You didn't have to go
overboard and say that he was such a rare type of black
man. "
"That wasn't what I wrote. I said h e was a rare type
in any color. Black or white or ocher or green, there
weren't many people in Chicago who bothered their
minds with anything like justice. Puzzlin g, how few.
You didn't even realize this until you met a person who
did have it on his mind as a primary interest, and then it
dawned on you how rare such a primary interest
was . . . . "
"The phrase you used was 'a moral life . ' "
"That was unfortunate. You've got to be careful
about the big word. I realized even then that it would
rub everybody the wrong way. This kind of abnormal ,
professorial Plato-and-Aristotle stuff is the kiss of
death. I probably didn't do Ridpath much good , either.
Definitely a mistake . . . . "
In the adjoining room , Minna was on the telephone .

He had heard the ringing and now he became aware (he
didn't often tune in) that this was an unusual call. Her
voice went up sharply. He listened, and then went
The Dean's December 1 13
around through the corridor to the dining room . The
Stambouli-work sofa was near the glass connecting
door. He sat bent over, superattentive . The conversa
tion was short. Minna tried to speak but the other party
cut her off. Something bad was happening, that was
certain . As soon as she rang off, she set out to find
Corde . He heard her steps as she moved in the wrong
direction, and called out, "Here . " She couldn't answer
when he asked what it was about , she only stared at
him. "That wasn't intensive care?"
Valeria worse? Or dead? No , it hadn't been that sort
of news, and it wasn't that sort of shock. Unlike
Elfrida , Minna had no repertoire of faces. He had
never seen her eyes so black or her skin so lined , so dry
and white.
"Well , what was that?" he said.
"Albert, do you know who? It was the Colonel . "
"Himself, in person?"
"It was the Colonel. I could murder him . "
"What's h e done? What did he say?"
"The Ambassador must have gone to work as soon as
you left . "
" I see. H e called the Minister o f Health , and the
Minister called the Colonel? . . . "
"That's the way it must have been done . "
"Well , all right, but what happened? Does the
Minister of Health run the hospitals or doesn't he?"
"Not this hospital . The Colonel is in charge. He just
told me in no uncertain way. He was terrible to me.
Terrible, Albert ! "
"I see . It's a power contest-a minister versus the
secret police . "
" I t was n o contest. He's the boss. "
"That's becoming clear. I ' m sorry, Minna. We
shouldn't have tried to go over his head if we couldn't
go high enough. The usual mistake , doing the thing by
halves. Should have realized . . . a secret police colo
nel doesn't give a damn for a cabinet minister. I think
this is why our old friend Petrescu keeps dropping from
114 SAUL B ELLOW
sight. He gave it a try but he was outranked, and now
he stays away . It was the second visit, the one we didn't
have permission for , that licked him . I shouldn't have
fooled around with the Ambassador. I should have
tried to get to the White House on it. A direct call,
President to President. It might have been pulled off.
Still might. These guys have a favored nation agree
ment with the U . S . , a hell of an important thing to
them. They wouldn't have refused. "
"He said . . . "
"Yes, what did the Colonel tell you?"
"That I could see my mother one more time. Only
once. That was what he said. "
"Oh?" said Corde , a s if h e understood . H e didn't
understand at all. He had a sharp pang of eyestrain.
"Give me that again : he said come and visit her?"
"Once, he said . "
"And when?"
"He's going to leave that to me . I couldn't believe it.
I tried to talk, but he cut me off. He said, 'Don't you
understand Rumanian? I'm allowing you and your
husband one visit . ' "
Corde by now had taken this in. Come, once , and
visit-it was the final visit. He said to Minna, "We
started a fight with the Minister, and the Colonel won. I
guess he took the dispute upstairs, and upstairs backed
him. I should have given this more thought when the
Ambassador offered . It was decent of him, but the
usual result. You think you're priming the decency
pump by pouring decency. It's never real . . . . Did he
say, 'You and your husband'?"
"Yes, Albert. What will I tell him? I'm supposed to
call back and say when we're coming. "
"What about Tanti Gigi?" said Corde . "If this i s the
one and only visit? . . . No, you can't talk to him about
Gigi."
"Albert, answer me : When shall we go? Tomorrow?
When?"
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1 16 SAUL BELLOW
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f$ii i i $i i ii eii i ,i .i
odi
‘ 0i Qi i $ i i (i i i - = i Wi .i i Si í
M-i i i i i } oi NVi i Gi i
i »G i i[ i i i -i -i -G$i $i -.Zdi
‘WVQi - , i i -.i .i i - ZiN œ i - G i
i Ji i $i r-GBi W ˙Q ii -i
i Q 9i Ei i i (i i .,i i Sdi
‘5i ¤i .(i - i i i- Zi W i i (i
Qi $i .Zdi
5i :i Gi i i i : -Gi (i i Yi
ÆG5-…i Æ Sdi
‘[ d i 5i i ,- i i i i Q-i
i i i [i $ i ,2i -G i Q-i
-Gi i †i i (i -i $ =i‘5 —i
.i i 0 d i - Ti ‘Xi Gi i i Q(i
$.-i $i J Y d i$i -Q-i $i i Qi
J†-.i ii i -i Bi :Gi i ,ii i
Gi $i Hi i ,i i , 0i i i
i i .Ti 5-i i ii $-Qi G-
i i . Si 5i -i -,i i -Ji
(-¿Qi Q oi ‘N i Gi i (i i i i -Qi
- jdi
‘[ i i Gi $ i i jdi i Bi
‘ [ i Gi G 0ii i Vi i i G- Sdi
‘ --i i i :Gi i i i Vi i \(Joi
[ i i i ,i i i i- Tdi
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‘f i i Gi G i .- Q jdi
‘ ´ / i i- i -i [ i Sdi
‘[ i i ,i i : ji í i Q,Z i
‘[i G i Yi [ 0 i-$i i i - i [ S iH i i i
1 20 SAUL BELLOW
i i *I i i * Y i[i i *i 2i
i i gi i *gi *i i i i i Bdi
N i 5 *i i *gi & Y i fi i i i
•i
qi &i i i &zi i i Ni &i i !i
2ii i &Vi & 7xi
W@ 2i ¡ i i &Ii i i i i
_ i &g u x i
i i *i i i :i i i Li !i
&i!i Æ&i i Ti i &i i i Bi
5gi i i i i i Ii =i A , i *g i i
& =di
5i (i i ˛i i bi & * i : i * Ii
i ! &i i *&ii i i & ¨di
: i & @i i &i 2 x &*i
i A =i : i i i
i * Ydi
Oii i ! i i &2i i&i i ! i
5i *& i ;*i i i i Bi : i i i Ii i
: wdi
Hi i i :i A 2 i *&i i i
i *&i i ei i ! i i i 5i
V @ I2i i &Ii @ ti i i i*i
* =i 5i ! &i !i * i & ei i i !i * i
&2i i r i ! i *&=i 5i &i i *i
i && 2i i i *&i i !i i i
* i g *i !i g i i i @Bi
5i & i *&*i &i i i gi i
i ii i 2i i i *i i i
!i i Ii &i 5i g*@i æi &i & :i Ni
&i i Xi &&i * 2i i &i i
2i &&i & i Xi i &i i : *
Yi
5i i &i r*& Bii[ i &* Ii Li *i
&i i &!& i !i i i i @i
*i 5i &i &i i !i i &i g i
„i i &i i i &i !i 5 I*&i Bi
[ i @i i i ‚& &i & i & i Li i * i i
i i *i b&&i &i i& i * i 2i *i
bi Ni *i i i i i jg *i &*&& i
i i #i 9 =i :i i #i Q4i i i
i 9i i !i 9#99i 9-c9 9i Q4
i i i ))i i 9i 9i 9i ı
9i i #i !-i 9ï `9i 9i
99…-i i !i 9i i 4i Q 0i 9i 9#i Pravda
9i /'Humanite.
5i (9# 9i i 9i i ii Zi A9i
9i i 94i Zi Xi Q-Qi i 9i i 4i 9i
Li ˚i i 9-i 9i -9i Zi 5i
i 9,i !i 99i , 0i ,-¿i #(i -i
9#i #+i 9i QQi i ! #,i 0 i 9(i i
9,(i 99 0i- i 94Yi Xi i i
Ji i !i X!- 9oi i !i 0i i
Ai 9i i i 9 0i 9i i .i i 9i 9,#i
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G4i 9.i - Zi 54i ,i i Vi (9i
-i 9.i Q99ƒi 5i #9,,i i
i Q#i 9i 0i BiAi i -#!i
# ,4Bi 5i -#i i Qi -i i Æi 9i -# i 9i
-ı#-9Q4Fi 9i !i i i 9i i i 9 i 9i
9Qi i i 9i i - i 9«i (#i - i 9i
9i i !i .# i H i Qi i 9{i 9i
!i i ,+4-c’ i 9i A9i 9i -i Q9-i
9 # Zi
W9i i - i 9i i ! i i i 9i -i Qi
! - ji N i !Qi 9i i i 9i i ,,i (i i
i i 4i 9i 4Q 0i ei 9i 9i i
oi W9i i 9i 9i i ii i -i ai
i i 0i #Qi i i 9 (i 99 i _i
i i i 99 ui Ni i -i i i
99i 9i 9i i fii f4i H9 # i :9 0i
!#-i 9 ¿i ! #i - 0 i i seemed 9#Qi- 0i
#4i 9i ##i -i Ø-i i 9i 9i 9,i . 0Bi
Ni Q,i 9i ! i H9 # Bi 5i 0i i #
9Qi - 0i#i 9(i i i !Yi : ! ih9 9Vi i
9i 9(9Q9 # 0i i 99 iF#i 9(i i i
9 u i b 9i 9i Fi i i 9i i
(i 0i i Zi i i Æ 0i
i i Æi i !i 9##¿i9Bi 5i 9,i 9i
1 22 SAUL BELLOW
&i &i i i ¢/i i li $i Œ fl T 5ii
i &i H / 0i i i +&i i +&i i i &i
P+i +i i ^&0i /Pi i +/+&i ./i
&/i i /i i &i =iH / œ&i &l&i i
/&i i +˛+ i +i / 0i +&i
&i + =i _&&0i ªl && i / /i & 0ii &i !i
+&i /i i i &i &+//i Hbi f 0i i
&(i // i i +//l/4i &i fi
i i $li i l5li Al&i !i +i i
W/i +/i / &0i +i +i +i i Pi !i
&i H /i i i i $ !l/i P¸0i li Ai
i /(i Bi
†N i X/ 0i 0 d ifi // Bi
Wi &i +i i i &i i &i + i 5˛+//+ i
&i / / 0 i &ki ji H / i ii Ai i / &i i
.&i i i i li &i +i i /&i 0i i i
(i //i A Si _l i + i i Ai (i &i
i i i i &0i s›i /P i li /li !i /&i
W & T d Ni i /Pi $i i i $i i /l.&Zi
fi i i 0i (i &l- +&i +.Bi H i i
fi &i iA 0ii +&i &i / & 0i Il/i
&i i !i l S i 5i &&i &/i (+Ti _li +i +&i
ri $ 0i //i &( &0i l & 0i &/+&i i
&&i i &i &Si Ni H/i l/i .&l i
i +&i i ¢i i !i fli i Si N i li i
.i li A Bi s 0 i 0i ~P(+ i N+&i i
i ri i /&i i BiNi &i &i
i i ++ i i &i //5 i oi 5i !i
i i i +i /&i li +&i +i &i +&+
/ 0i i &/( / 0i $i 5&i /&i &i i
(i +i &i lPi +&0i (i +i «J.^
(i i &+(i ( Si _li i &+//i i i i
( l&i + 8i X/ l i /i &i !i & /&+&i
l//i &i i (i /i +Si H/i i i
/i i i l Si Ni ii &i $i i i i
0i i $ l /i .i / &+&i +i +&i /
li i /+Pi i i i i &&i $i l i i +i
(i + 0i i +&i +l+i +i i .i i +&i
++i $i i l (A +&+i (/li & & =i
The Dean 's December 1 23
"Wass willst du haben?" i K F =i ıî ˇi

< §xi
[ Ki F =i i ii |i „FC i i i
i KKi i !i @i |F @ i i @i
H i ii @ x i KFi t “i
eFi =xi
ti i Ii !i i i i Ki i Ci
fi ii @Ki !i K@§i |i i ! i i
Ki CFi t wi t i KK i Gi i Ii
FKiI i i Ki ¤ i i Ki 2i
i H i K @ i Ki I i F! i i i
! Fi !i bK=i H @‡Ki ! i i Ki K Ii @Ki
!i i KIF K i i i i !@Fi i i
i I =i 5i i Fi i K @i
i ! «i i Hi Ki @i i ii i
i ii @ 7 i :i i Ki K KK xi i
Ki _i i Ki i i @i i i f Kı
K §i [ i i i i i K@i @ Ki i
5 @!i Hi i i i Ii Ki i
C@xi i @i i i )Ki C K K i !i
K i i @i Ki i F Ki i i
KIKwi : i Ki i @·i !i i F Kxi
i i i .KK i f i i i
KK i Ki i i Ki i
ri !KK =i |i Ki i @@ii I Ki !i K]Ki
i Ki K=i |Ki !i i i i i i H@ i
Hi Ii –ˇ i i K Ki K i i i
K!i i i vi i i i i K Ti
_i ti Ci Ci i Ti Wi Ki §i | i
Ci K i i “i H ci i i i K)
K Si
5i |@ xi Ki f «i [i !& i
Sxi
:z i i i Ki i @ ;xi
fi Ki i =i i i i Ci @K i
-i i i !i i !§xi Ki f =i i
Ki KK =i W i i i 6 i :i @i
·i i CW ï i i Ii i KTi i
i Ki @!i i i i Ki i i !i i Ki
124 SAUL BELLOW
l(i .i 6. i !i 6(6ji ‘6Ji {Oi
6i = Zi O6i
¶ Z 6ii i i i !i Ji
‘:i i !ii i i i i :i .iJ6i i
(.i !i 6i WFi F i .i . * + V6i ‚ {Z i
sb i ! i Hi i Wi } Yi bi !i
W Zi Wi 6 ºi
For, lo ! with a little rod did I but touch the honey of

romance,
And must I lose a soul's inheritance?
i i i 66i i i i i 6Zi _{i i

⁄i 66i 0i +i i «øi
2ii (i { = i
s 0i i ti i = i Hi _i !i i
F( ui i . . ti 6i _ i t,i 6i {i
i i 6i i @@ 0i i 6˚, 6ßi 6 0i . i
i i i i 6 . Zi f 6i ,i {i i
i i !i i insult i i Ti W 2i { i 6 ,i Ii
(i i Tfi
s : 6 i i ti ßi i i ,i •i 6+i
t =i
s : i 6i i (i @ 0i 6i i i 6 F i +i + Y i
i @ i !i 6i i i 0i i "6i
6i 6i @@i 6 660i i i {i 2i 0i
i 66i ¤i 6i Fi i .(.i !i 6,
@ i 66 wi ~F,i „ß6i F, «i „ß6i ,i i
„ri b( i 6i . i s X (6 6 2i = i
i fi i i ØFi6i @1i Wi i
i i i ,0i i .i i 6i i 6i !i "! i
(@( . Yi i i Fi 6i i i }#6 w i¢W6i
H @i i Fji i 6i 6i i i !ii
·i i si @ < g| ii F.6@!ii .i 6i
i i i 6 S 1 si ‚ i i :i i {i ¤i !i
i 6i i Harper's, i @Fi i i i 66i
i 6@i i i i = i
Xi i i i æ ,6Bi ti i i {i
i i 6i i 6i i 6{i i i 6i
66i , 60i 6i !i 6i i { i æ66 0i i 6 i 6 i !i
tension. Dewey would not be taken in by his easy
posture, or any of the old disguises. Dewey had the
trick of making him an adolescent again. In adoles
cence Dewey had always had the upper hand. He had
been precociously sharp.
Corde rumbled, "Not the old town anymore. "
" I suppose i t isn't. But you were your old self i n your
approach . You were eloquent, you were superexpres
sive. Just the way you used to be-you were metaphori
cal; you were emotional; you really let yourself go. I
recognized lots of the old turns of phrase. Some of
them still there . "
"They probably are , " said Corde .
"Made quite a stir, didn't you?"
Dewey's eyes, pale blue, now set in· puffed and
wrinkled lids, mocked him. Not unkindly. He was on
first-name terms with Kissinger and Helmut Schmidt.
Millions read him. In his recent swing through Europe
and Asia, he had interviewed Sadat, Margaret Thatch
er, Indira Gandhi. No reason to be mean with me,
Corde was thinking, in the leisure of this personal
nostalgic hour. Not so long as I admit his superiority.
And I do admit it. Why shouldn't I? Corde now
decided to make an open concession and to bring this
chapter in Spangler's psychic history to a happy close.
This syndicated columnist who was a sizable node in the
relaying of the tensions that pulsated through the
civilized world, made it tremble, saturated it with
equivocation, covered its structural outlines with flour
ishes, filled it with anxieties, happened also to be an old
friend. Yes , the same Dewey who at Lakeview had
been so self-conscious about the size and shape of his
ears that he would give them a nimble tuck under his
cap when no one was looking, like an awkward girl ;
who even tried to fasten them to his head with tape.
The Dewey who had tried to grow a mustache to
resemble William Powell-William Powell had ob
sessed him. The pale vinegar worm he had been was
now a pundit and an arbiter, his columns anxiously,
1 26 SAUL BELLOW
Di Ji +i >+>i n> + B i _n>i +>i i >i
++ki P+k ei !>+0i >](+ ei +ki fi > >i
Ai i £+P i i .n «i
‘[nV(i ki P+i >i >i >+.ei X¿J> S i
‘[ e i : ‡ . iJSi :i . i n>+>oi 5 JVi i>i ! >Jni
Ji !Ji n;i
‘H i : ( i i >i i > i Z JZi Xi i
!£ei > i X%JZi W>zi +ki kj i
‘b i +!Vi .> Jei +i S Z S i
"
‘ e i 0i :i J.. i ¯i >i i >i .Zi [ nJi

+'i –kk>i i JBi 5 >‡ i >i B i :>i.n>i J,i ni n Si
X i nJi i . JV i > i + Zi :i ki J..Ji
> >S i
‘ : i > n >i ni .+ > 0 i Ai + Bi
‘5i X. i .>+i >>i i i –££+ki
.i !i n Y i
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n>i +i i T i
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i (i i >Pi +i i J>+i +>i W+> koi
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>i (i i +i +.i >i n>+kZi ´k kk –i
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.,i i Jki – Bi A.+i +>i AJ+ >. ei ª+i
+i i ni n0i +>i .+>i i > i +i Di £i ii
>i +>. B i
‘ni J+nji >ni H £Ji i i ki
3)i^ i ^ ;’i 3i i 3i ai ’ <i |i ^ ˝)i
i ;î ’i ; /Pi t3i 3’3i ^;i ^ Ti
‘i ^ i i $$3^3 §˘i
‘W i ^ 3i Ri i ’i W^ ;’ ’§di
‘5^33⁄i Ri $)i )3) i f33R T i
i i î i 3i $)i W^3i |3i ’3)3’ ’ :i
t3i i 3;’i ;I 3 i 3’i i f3 3R=i |i
/i f33Ri )3§i 5^3i 3 ’i i i i / #3i Bi
|i /i ^ 3 i )3!3i i ^ ’3i 33i Ri ’i /i
!3’§i ˆ i 3’33i ’i 3’ 3’/Ri ’i ^33i
i ’i 3 3i ^wi ˆ i 3’i R )i 3i 3i 3i
K/ 3 i ’i î i Ri /i i i ,i Ri $i i
! = iA ! i ^ ¡i 32i î ^3⁄i ’33i 3i 3i i
)3 3Yi
‘ ˆ i are 3 i i Ri $ 3 w d5^3’i i H ’ 3i
vi i ;$i R 2 i3 3 / R 2 i‘ˆ i i 3i
^3 Y i
t3i 2i n^33˙i ’ ^’i i )i i 3 i )3 i
‘| i ˆ ⁄i i 3R i i ’ 3Yi ‘: i i Ri
’§di
‘ : i ^3)i i R3 i i ’i i t^ ’’3 i ’i !i ’i i
`’ î 3’ 3 ’Yi |3i i i $3’i ^3 2i i
R 3i i ;i 3r i ^3i = i
‘ 3i 3Ri i Ri ^ §i ˆ3 i :i ^’,iR i 3i ^3i
’oi ˆ —)3i i i 3’ î i i wi ˆ i Ri
’3i i 3i i ’wi : — ii ^3’i ^3i ^3ii
3i i ’i i ^;’i î i )i Ri ’Ti 5^ Ł i R = i
’ 3mi /3 )3i i î 33’i 3’i i 3 *wi
‘W3i ’i $33 i i ^3i W^; 3i | 3i $i Ri , 3 B i˙ i i
,Ri ’’ i ’i 3i Ri ^ 3’Ł i ’ 3Ti 53i
^3!i 3r33i 7i î ^3i ,i /i i ’3 wi ^Łi i
Ri ’’i ’=i | 33)i 3i î F3i i i
) R Y ii Ri ^ i
‘ ˙ i 3i 3 Ri )3! B i
‘i ’33 i i 3 i )3!¶i : iR3i 3 i i ^’3i i î
î ’3’ i :⁄3i 33 Y i
‘ /i ^3)3i i i )i ! i Ri i Ri 4 3 v i ’˙i
^3 3§di
‘5^3i i )i §i : Ł i ’i î 3 3i Ri
128 SAUL BELLOW
Poi Vi Pi i i i i $i i D_
0i i Pi ;i $i i $C ui i # Vi i Pi Si
i ; u i
ł[ i ‡i i i i ##i $i Yi
s i #i #Pi 0i X#? Ti i i i #˛ # i Zi
i[ i i ;#i $ Y˘i
s[ i i ¥˘i
s ii i Pi i ui 5i ii 9i ei i
$# i i Ti i[ Vi i i i
i i i i i ## T˘i
s i i i iii ;# wi i a Yi
si i i Ci =i i i i H …i i Si W#i
W Yi i i i W;##; i #PBi i #i i
¥ i 0i i #Ci i i i #i i
B i [i i VC =i [ V i ##i i ?#i i
i i ei i ##i i i ui “i Zi ii Ci
i ¤i # oi i Ci 9i i #Pi ui i[
,i i i 0i i jdi
si i #i # Ti ‡ i i =iX i i i i
i .i ii ? Yi i i 0i ?ki ¥i
X 0i V i ?i i i #kYi
łH V i # i i i i ei [ Vi i P"i !i
i [ V i i ;#i P Zi 5i ;i i ki i
i i # YV ~C?#i
i Ti i i$ w i
?i #i #Pi i #i i i ~PCi
? =i X# 0i i #Ci i #i Ti [ Vi
#i P Bi | n i ;i ;i ;i T =f= 0i i i i i
?#i i ii i ?i i i ·#i
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|i Ci i i i $i i i #i i
i i ; oi | i i i si #Pi ˘i u iZ Z
i Ci i e i f =i VC i i Bi Xi i P"i
i §i
łi $i t’ =i f Vi i 5i i ##i Ci
i ii i $i Bi
s5i i i ?#i ?i i $i i $ Tdi
H #i i ##i i P #i ¢ı
P; # i i #i ?i i #i ”i
fl i si i i Bi i 0i ui All P" i $i
M //i i AM =i: i i !i :i i / i Mi i
i Mi =i i Mi i //i M gi )i
_/i A,i Mi i ·!i /i i !i Ei M/i
i i //i Ti Mi M ni Mi )/i oi i i
T i oi i i Mi !i Mi ƒ i
gi i ! // i M jxi
† : i /i ,i Mi AMi ƒi bi i
! i Mi / wi i !·i i i i i
i i 2i Ti N i i i Zxi
+ : iM Mi i Mi M i i 2i i Mi i
i ,i £i i
†WM i i i /, i ji i i M i i Mi
i i i Mi i Mi /i ƒi :i zi i Mi
ƒi :i i i Mi / i i; Mi i Si
†W // i i pi ,ii i ! i S i :i i i i
Mi Mi i /i i Mi M i bi /i ,i i /¤i
i Sxi
† M i i i 0i ⁄i Zi WM i i !i i
/i M i !i Mi Mi 4/ ¶i i Mi i
i i i i i ˛i Mi i ! S ib/
Zi :i M,i zi //i M 2i =i YR 0i i i Mi
i i M ·i !i Ti i Mi i )!i Mpi
Qg Z i
†N i i /i ! i M/i !i M i wi r / Ti i
M i ! i Mi i i i , S i
†WM i i i i M ji M 'i M i / i Mi i
2i i 8 i
fi i i i i $, Ti 5Mi /i AMg i
/i i M i /, gSi Ni i i i / Qi /,Bi
Ni 2i †WM i was M i ,i i i i Mi xi
†:i i i ,Bi : z i Mi i Ai
,i i )/ :˘i
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+i /¸i Mi i /! i!i ji Ni i ! i
i // i wi i M /i Mgi M i i M
/ 2i / Ti i M, M i i Mi :i ı
i 2i i i i Ti 5Mi : i i ]Mi i
bMi _ /g i i i /i Mgi Mi i
Mi !i M i gi oi I ⁄i i i ! i Ti WMi i
130 SAUL BELLOW
# #i 6 2i i #kVi i @# i i i i i
i attached. i Harper's i 66i i i
6i i C Zi [ i i Ci i i
»i i $i i i i i i #i bIi
Boobus Americanus i Ni #i Ci
i i » i _i i #6i i # @ Z#@i i
i Ci Vi i 6i 6i 66i i # ui
5i 6i $i i /i i Ci i i
66@@i i i i i b<i 6i $i
#i 6i Ci i 6» i i i i i
2i i 6i Ci i ##i i i $i i $i i zi
i i 66i @ / ui 5 ßi ##i L i $i
6 0i i 6i i i i # 6i ##i ##i $i ##i # # B i
Harper's i i $i i I 2i i [ i ii
$i »i # 2i i 6i »$#i i 6 ¥i i $i
i 6i iŒ6# i 6i ##»i i ii i
i i CCi i ii i 6 B˘i
Œi i i i _ ui _ i i 6 V i # ui i
C Vi Zdi
Œ z6i i #i 6 ji
. /6 Bdi
Œ6i Zi Œ i i #@i i 0 i i i ˜i
i i I 6i i 6 2i Ii i ‘
»6 ji i i i i i i ii C
#»66ji 5 Ł6i i r /i Ci i
$i I6 i [ V i Ii i # i
_ i 6 ii I<i 5 V6i i !@i 6i
»i di
5i 6i $i i i »i »6i i i i
@i i i 6 =if i i i ii i 6ji
> æ˙i? i i $66i 6Vi i i 6i $i
2i # i [ VC i #6i 6i $i i #6.Zi [i
i $i –i i 6Cui i XVi i $i i
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was so characteristic. But Corde didn't have the time
for it. He had to go. He downed his drink and colle<:ted
his things. " Sorry, Dewey. "
"Where are you going? I thought we'd have a talk. "
"I haven't got the time I expected t o have ," said
Corde. He began to edge out of the horseshoe booth
with his sack of Kents. " I've got to go to the hospital
with my wife , to see her mother. "
"Why, I thought you couldn't."
"They've okayed one visit more . "
"One? Xi last? They think she's dying?"
"They must. She is . "
Very thoughtfully, Spangler spread both his hands
stiffly on the table. They were braced by his short arms ,
so that his shoulders were lifted. Grimacing, he said,
"Terrible. Terrible on your wife . Very bad. Punitive.
Somebody's got it in for those ladies. I can understand
why you'd think of taking it to the White House ."
"It's too late. It was only a kind of fantasy, anyway.
You're locked in, you're tense, and suddenly you
remember that you're part of a proud superpower, and
you say, 'I don't have to put up with this.' That's
baloney, of course . It's from the good old days when an
American abroad still got protection from his govern
ment. That went out with gunboat diplomacy. There's
also the Chicago approach: 'I must know somebody
who knows somebody.' "
"Somebody? That's me, for instance. I can still give
it a try, if you like. I'm not really effective now. In the
Kissinger days it was different. These new guys ain't
much, Albert . You might as well talk to Bugs Bunny . "
"There's actually nothing that would help now. But
it's nice to see you, Dewey. I'll settle for just that. Xi
touch of the old warmth-I'm grateful for it."
"Yes, this must be a hell of a place seen from inside.
You're in it. I'm just another VIP, passing through. But
my impression riding around the city is that it's got to
be a miserable damn comfortless life , and scary as well
as boring. I wish there were something I could do for
132 SAUL BELLOW
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134 SAUL BELLOW
He reviewed the prospects for a revival of friendship
with heartfelt objectivity. There was no question of
rejecting Dewey. He'd never do that. But how far he'd
admit him depended on his admissibility. They had
diverged and diverged and diverged. Each of them had
been spoilt, humanly, but in very different ways. Look
at Dewey . Dewey grew up among warehouses , garages
and taverns on Clark Street, not far from the site of the
Valentine's Day massacre , but now he was a great
figure in his profession, ten times more important than
any U . S . senator you could name. When he discussed
plutonium sales to the Third World or Russian natural
gas or the diamonds the emperor Bokassa had given to
Giscard , he did it with a flavor of art and high thought.
He quoted Verlaine or Wittgenstein-in fact he quoted
them too much. But those Rilke readings hadn't been
wasted: the need for pure being, the fulfillment of the
soul in art , Weltinnenraum. But then there was the
other viewpoint, the La Salle Street one that you got
from a man like Zaehner-it's a jungle out there.
(Correction: a garbage dump ! ) Now, between these
opposites , what ground had Dewey taken? The great
public, the consumer of his views , didn't require him to
take any ground. He needed only to keep talking. He
lived (although Corde doubted that such tension should
be called living) in a kind of event-glamour, among the
deepest developments of the times, communicating
what most concerned serious and responsible opinion.
To Corde there was something bogus and grotesque
about this. It was only "modem public consciousness. "
There was no real experience in it, none whatever. The
forms that made true experience were corrupted. So
Corde asked himself, "What would this wonderful
palship of two old boys from Chicago look like if we
brought it up to date?" The answer was that it could
only look like Dewey's journalism. Dewey in his confi
dent , comforting, but also peremptory way would tell
him , "This is what we've got . Lucky us , to have such a
bond. " Their friendship revived , he would lay it all on
you in his newspaper language, and strengthened by
those Lincoln Park days, by books and poetry and
friendship, by all that Corde had learned meantime , he
might become an even more princely "communicator. "
And now, with stormier objectivity, himself: How
had Albert Corde been spoilt? Well , Albert Corde had
illusions comparable to Dewey's , notwithstanding that
they were in different fields. Look at him-an earnest,
brooding, heart-struck, time-ravaged person (or
boob) , with his moral desires and taking up the burdens
of mankind. He was, more or Jess in secret, serious
about matters he couldn't even begin to discuss with
Dewey. There was, for instance , the reunion of spirit
and nature (divorced by science). Dewey (Corde hap
pened to have caught this in one of his columns) was
rough on writers who talked about "spirit , " intellectu
als in flight from the material realities of the present
age. Corde could name you ten subjects on which they
could never agree. And if he himself had been thor
oughly clear in his mind , if the subjects had been
cleanly thought out and resolved , there would be no
difficulty in discussing them. So it was evident that
Albert Corde was a spoilt case. Dewey pressed him
about his motives for writing those Harper's articles.
What was the real explanation? Again, the high
intention-to prevent the American idea from being
pounded into dust altogether. And here is our Ameri
can idea: liberty, equality, justice , democracy, abun
dance. And here is what things are like today in a city
like Chicago. Have a look! How does the public
apprehend events? It doesn't apprehend them . It has
been deprived of the capacity to experience them.
Corde recognized how arrogant he had been . His
patience was at an end . He had had enough. He was
now opening his mouth to speak. And now, look out !
In the American moral crisis , the first requirement
was to experience what was happening and to see what
must be seen. The facts were covered from our percep
tion. More than they had been in the past? Yes ,
136 SAUL BELLOW
because the changes , especially the increase in
consciousness--and also in false consciousness--was
accompanied by a peculiar kind of confusion. The
increase of theories and discourse, itself a cause of new
strange forms of blindness , the false representations of
"communication," led to horrible distortions of public
consciousness. Therefore the first act of morality was to
disinter the reality, retrieve reality, dig it out from the
trash, represent it anew as art would represent it. So
when Dewey talked about the "poetry," pouring scorn
on it, he was right insofar as Corde only made
"poetic" gestures or passes, but not insofar as Corde
was genuinely inspired. Insofar as he was inspired he
had genuine political significance.
We were no longer talking about anything. The
language of discourse had shut out experience altogeth
er. Corde had accordingly spoken up--or attempted to
speak up. I tried to make myself the moralist of seeing.
I laid it on them. They mostly hated me for it. My own
real consciousness had become intermittent over many
years. That's what being spoilt means, in my case; it
means fitfulness of vision. Now you have it, now you
don't. That leads �o exaggeration, also. Anyway, that
was what I had in mind. Those Chicago guys may be
right to hate me. I may deserve it. But not for this. I
was speaking up for the noble ideas of the West in their
American form. Which no one was asking me to do,
and which I took upon myself without even thinking
who the hell was I ! A kind of natural effrontery. "This
is your city-this is your American democracy. It's also
my city. I have a right to picture it as I see it." Or else,
"The public doesn't apprehend events which must be
apprehended. " And I intended to stick it to everybody.
"But you've got to go. Okay," said Dewey. "I'll walk
you to the car. "
Never again would the gesturing excited adolescent
weedy Spangler be seen . There was now a stout
dwarfish man awkwardly trying to get out of the booth,
pushing on the table with his knuckles. His beard gave
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138 SAUL BELLOW
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these synthetics were saturated with the fragrance of

the ladies, even (so Corde felt) with their personalities.
To the right was the primitive kitchen, to the left the
old-fashioned water closet. Above were closed cup
boards containing boxes of family relics, documents.
Traian handed Gigi into the china-closet elevator,
aligned the swinging doors, pressed the button.
Squeezed into a comer, Corde lifted up his coat collar,
tied the muffler over it tightly, bracing himself for the
street. Minna looked sternly absentminded ; gracefully
dissociated as well. By the small light, her white face
was dark under the eyes. The outward curve of her
upper lip, the pressure marks of her severe chin, almost
made a stranger of her. Corde was carrying the plastic
Christmas bag with the Kents in it. Minna got into the
front seat of the Dacia while Traian was hooking up the
windshield wipers-they would be stolen here if you
didn't lock them in the glove compartment. "Albert,
give me the cigarettes," she said. When Traian sat
behind the wheel, Minna spoke to him , handed him
one of the cartons. He opened it and filled the door
pocket with Kents. No surprise , no problem ; he was
on. He drove to the hospital. Gigi, sitting beside Corde
in the back seat, seemed incapable of speaking.
Snow might have helped that night, brightened the
streets. It had begun to fall earlier but soon petered
out. No one went strolling in this blackness. There was
only an occasional car. Corde thought he had never
seen such street lamps before--something like phos
phorescent humus inside the globes.
But at the hospital the porter's lodge was brightly
lighted. There were women from the country waiting
for passes, peasants in boots and kerchiefs. Then up
came Tanti Gigi in the draggled Orion fur, her bent
back and bobbed gray hair, a splash of terror on her
face, her wide forehead pure white. She stood staring at
the ground. The porter had Minna and Corde on his
visitors list and handed them their passes. Traian got
him to come outside. The man carried a clipboard; he
140 SAUL BELLOW
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out the word. Corde's guess was that she was asking
still to be taken home. But a woman like Valeria would
have made alternative preparations-plan A, plan B .
Fully aware, and good and ready-that would be
characteristic of her. He thought there was no other
way to interpret the expression of her face; he derived it
even from the posture of her legs and from the old
woman's belly, which had risen higher than ever. On
both sides of her face, the currents of hair were shining
on the bed linen. Consciousness was as clear as it had
ever been. No, more acute than ever, for when Minna
signaled that he should take her hand (again he noted
the blue splayed knuckle , and the blue kink of the vein
there), she pressed his fingers promptly. He said, "We
came as soon as possible." Then, as if he should not
delay the essential message, he said in his deep voice,
"I also love you, Valeria. "
This had a violent effect. One o f her knees came up,
her eyes, very full under the skin of the lids, moved
back and forth. She made an effort to force them to
open. Her face was taken by a spasm. The monitors
jumped simultaneously. All the numbers began to
tumble and whirl. He might have killed her by saying
that. Either because she believed him or because she
did not. But she ought to have believed him. So far as
he painfully knew, it was the truth. The doctor was
startled by the speed of the flashing digits. She mo
tioned to Corde and Minna to step back. No, to go.
They returned to the staff room. He took off his
gown. He could hardly bear this. The light was very
sharp in this doctors' room.
Minna said, "That was right, what you told her."
Corde was less sure of that.
Then Minna said, "Albert, what kind of state do you
think she's in?"
He thought the soul was loosened in Valeria, ready
to pull out , and that she could therefore know you for
what you were . He answered nothing.
The doctor came in and the women spoke. Minna
142 SAUL BELLOW
said, "It's all right on the monitor again. " She said she
would go out now and fetch her aunt. She was deter
mined to get her in. She said, "Valeria was the big
sister; she always took care of her. Tonight :i have to
do it." Gigi hadn't even asked to be brought. Corde fig
ured that here in the Soviet bloc you learned to refrain
from asking. And then, too, Gigi depended on Minna
as she had done on Valeria. But it turned out that
Minna had promised her aunt-she would have told
her with severity: "I'm taking you. You'll see her!"
Minna folded and laid down the sterile gown and the
boots-she was even now thorough in her orderliness,
absentmindedly ritualistic. She told the doctor that she
was going out for a few minutes. She'd be right back.
The apprehensive doctor did not question her but
shook her head . This was wrong. The rules were being
broken. What if the Colonel should burst in?
As Corde helped Minna over the ice of the sloping
driveway, the evergreens made a chill sound above
them, as if things could simmer also below freezing.
Passive , stooped and silent, Gigi sat waiting to see
whether Minna would keep her promise. She would.
Traian's signal was that the cigarettes had worked, the
fix was in. So the two women now went up the slope to
the main building, while Corde took Gigi's place beside
Traian on the bench. Then the waiting room lights were
switched off. The porter, taking no chances, hid them
in darkness. As if the Colonel would care much. Now
that he had had his way, the matter was closed. The
doctors had probably told him that it was all over with
Valeria, and the deal with the Minister of Health was,
"Let them come."
Meanwhile, Valeria's mind was clear. This was what
impressed Corde most deeply. She could still hear and
understand everything, and respond. Probably Dr.
Drur with the soft face, and the intensive care staff,
talked with her, kept her informed. A physician herself
(the founder of this hospital), Valeria had seen plenty
of people go. The woman doctor seemed particularly
close to her. To have a woman in attendance was a good
thing. She had probably said, "Your daughter has
permission tonight." Valeria would understand what
this signified. There again you saw the extent of the
woman connection, its great importance.
Dr. Drur hadn't doped Valeria (professional courte
sy) and she was dying in clear consciousness. And
Corde contrasted this with the consciousness of that
boy Rick Lester, when he realized that he had gone
through the window and was falling. The young man
had played a kind of game that night, assuming the
usual safe conditions, but the conditions were missing
-he had a gag in his throat and two or three seconds to
recognize that he was finished. He, Corde, had more in
common with that boy than with the old woman. She
didn't have their sort of mind, the modern conscious
ness, that equivocal queer condition, working with a
net of foolish assumptions, and so much absurd un
wanted stuff lying on your heart. He was impressed
with Valeria. (Couldn't he attribute it to his equivocal
consciousness that he was so much impressed?) She and
Dr. Raresh, Marxists, had gone into the streets with
roses to greet the Russians, lived to see the prison state,
repented. She went back to the old discipline, believed
in the good, probably took it all seriously about the
pure in heart seeing God, and the other beatitudes.
(Nothing too rum?) Her ashes would be placed beside
those of her husband.
Though it went against the grain, he suspected that
his nephew may have been right, that on the night he
was killed Rick Lester had been out for dirty sex, and it
was this dirty sex momentum that had carried him
through the window. Corde understood this far better
than he understood the old woman's beliefs. So what
was the pure-in-spirit bit? For an American who had
been around, a man in his mid-fifties, this beatitude
language was unreal. To use it betrayed him as a man
wildly disturbed, a somehow crazy man. It was foreign,
bookish-it was Dostoevsky stuff, that the vices of
144 SAUL B ELLOW
Sodom coexisted with the adoration of the Holy So
phia, cynicism joined with purity in the heart of the _
paradoxical Russian. He was no Russian but Huguenot
and Irish by descent, a Midwesterner flattened out by
the prairies, a journalist and a lousy college dean. He
suspected that the academic connection had been get
ting to him. He could feel, with Dr. Faustus, "0 would
that I had never seen Wittenberg, never read a book" ;
and it was no wonder that the classroom, the library
environment, had driven him finally into the streets of
Chicago, or that he had written-well, written that at
the Cabrini Green black housing project, some man
had butchered a hog in his apartment and had thrown
the guts on the staircase, where a woman, slipping on
them, had broken her arm, and screamed curses in the
ambulance . She was smeared with pig's blood and
shriller than the siren. It was illumination from a
different side, Chicago light and color, not the Sermon
on the Mount.
He was strongly agitated. He thought, Hadn't it been
too easy, bribing the porter? Had he let Minna and
Gigi walk into a trap, where the Colonel would swoop
down on the deathbed and grab them? But what would
he want to do that for-why arrest old Gigi? No, Corde
saw that he was beginning to think like those women
who imagined themselves locked in a mortal struggle
with this police colonel, who, right now, must be dining
in his luxurious villa, eating delicacies and drinking
special vintages. The New Class, or new New Class,
lived like Texas millionaires. Corde with his twenty-odd
years in Europe understood this. Millions of Americans
of his generation had gone out into the world. There
were robustious theorists who maintained that this was
one of the luckiest developments in history and had
done humankind nothing but good. There was a very
different point of view. Folks from Trenton, Topeka,
Baton Rouge, who lived in Japan, Iran, Morocco,
were, as he had read in a magazine, "representatives of
the fantasmo imperium of corporate dollars." It was in
his dentist's reception room that he had found this
piece on American mercenaries and arms salesmen,
"high-technology killers operating in Africa and Cen
tral America." He had picked up this magazine from
the top of the lighted tropical fish tank.
He must ask Dewey Spangler about the "fantasmo
imperium." It would amuse him. "Why would corpo
rate dollars be spent on these twerps? Americans living
abroad are always supposed to 'represent' something.
But there's you , for instance, Albert-what would you
be representing?"
That would be a good question. What did Corde
represent? Who was this person sharing the bench with
Ioanna's nephew Traian? He carried a U.S. passport
and money and credit cards. He was dressed in coat,
gloves, muffler and an encircling fedora over his radar
dish face, his somewhat swelling eyes and plain mouth.
He seemed to be picking up signals from all over the
universe, some from unseeable sources. His neck was
long; his back, too, seemed to go on longer than was
strictly necessary. He was a mid-American of mild
appearance. He was aware of that. He called this "the
Pullman car gentility" and believed he had inherited it
from his Wilson-era grandfather. (Corde didn't admire
Woodrow Wilson. Wilson had done great harm . ) Any
way, he, Albert, was a Corde. Six generations in
Joliet, Illinois, two in Chicago, and he had just told a
dying old Macedonian woman in a Communist hospital
that he loved her. This was the measure of the oddities
life had compiled for. him. "I also love you, Valeria. "
But although she must have been longing t o hear this,
and although it was true (it was, dammit, one hundred
percent true ! ) , she was nevertheless so shocked that the
machines began to flash and yammer and the doctor
was scared witless. Why had he upset her? He must
have reminded her again of her fears, which she would
carry into the life to come, or at least up to the gate of
death. Perhaps there was no need to take this personal
ly, or to compare himself, as he sometimes did, to a
146 SAUL BELLOW
longtime sexual offender still on probation, though the
most exacting parole officer would have been satisfied
with him. Oh, those sexual offenses! He was by the
strictest marital standards decent, mature, intelligent,
responsible, an excellent husband. But within the his
torical currents he could not be viewed from a positive
aspect because he was a representative of the rotten
West, lacking ballast, the product of an undesirable
historical development, a corrupted branch of humani
ty. One needn't go as far as the extremist Eastern
dissidents who called Europe an incorrigible old whore
and America her most degenerate descendant, in the
stage of general paresis. That was going far. But it was
possible to suspect him of being incapable of sustaining
a serious relationship, as seriousness was defined by the
older, indeed archaic, branch of humanity with its
eternal fixtures. Valeria would therefore be thinking
that the world Corde came from was the world in which
her daughter must live out her life. She must depend
now on that world and on this man. So Corde had been
moved that in dying she should still be in torment over
her daughter, and so Valeria heard his bass voice
assuring her, and she was pierced with doubts. This "I
also love you," which made her squeeze his hand,
might be true, but it might be the truth merely of an
agitated moment, no good within an hour. He could see
that, yes. It was very painful to him, too.
If we could say what we meant, mean what we said !
But we didn't seem to be set up for it. We were set up
instead in a habitual state of hypnotic fixity, and this
hypnotic fixity was the real fantasmo imperium. Well,
never mind the philosophy. But on her deathbed an old
woman hears the deep voice of her son-in-law, and it
tells her that he loves her. Loves! With what! Neverthe
less it was true, however queer. There was nothing too
rum to be true. He depended on that now. Although
Valeria-she wasn't going to have time to verify his
declaration . She'd have to take his word for it, because
for her this world of death was ending. World of death?
He surprised himself when he put it that way. More of
his poetry, Dewey Spangler would have said, and bared
his teeth in a grin-Spangler still had those sharp and
healthy teeth. Same dazzling teeth; the ginger marma
lade beard was their new setting.
Still Dewey had asked him one really hot question:
Why a professor in Chicago? Corde might have an
swered that the reason was coming, it was on its way.
There were hidden and extensive fantasy ambitions and
grand designs connected with it. At the moment of
decision, it had been convenient that he should have no
clear outline. He remembered how surprised his sister
had been when he:,.moved back. "Why a college, and
why here?'' Elfrida inquired.
He couldn't really answer, but he did say, "For me
it's more like the front lines. Here is where the action
is."
"I wouldn't have left Paris, not with an apartment on
Rue Vaneau. Did you sell it for a fortune?"
"No fortune."
"Then getting away from some French broad or
other?"
"No, that wasn't it, either, although there are plenty
of broads that can inspire leaving-even going into
hiding, or taking holy orders. "
"Who said, 'When you're tired of Paris you're tired
of life'?"
"It was said about London. And the same party said
that no man of what he called 'intellectual enjoyment'
would immerse himself and his posterity in American
barbarism. But that was two hundred years ago."
"That's a real book answer," was Elfrida's comment.
"You want to spend the rest of your life reading books
in a college? Don't expect me to swallow that. I know
you better. You're not a retirement type. You don't
look it, but you're a combative type. You just said you
were looking for action."
148 SAUL BELLOW
"When I was a kid I had martial instincts."
"You do still. I can't dope you out, Albert. What
advantage do you see here?"
"There's the big advantage of backwardness. By the
time the latest ideas reach Chicago , they're worn thin
and easy to see through. You don't have to bother with
them and it saves lots of trouble . "
H e stopped these thoughts and recollections, for he
now caught sight of Minna and Gigi walking carefully,
slow, down the slope under the pines. Corde went out
to meet them. He asked no questions. No one spoke. It
hadn't been a long visit. Maybe the doctor, frightened
by Minna's boldness, had asked them to leave. The
Colonel hadn't surprised them. No, the Colonel now
cared nothing about any of them.
Traian opened the dark green doors of the tub-
shaped Dacia. The interior was freezing.
At home, too, it was too cold to get into bed.
"Albert, I can't take my clothes off. "
Corde poured from the palinca bottle. "Let's swal
low some of this."
They sat in their coats. When Corde removed his hat,
he felt the cold on his bald crown. "You didn't stay
long . . . . "
"Because of Dr. Drur. I took her completely by
surprise with Gigi. I think there were watchers every
where . "
"And what did Gigi say?"
"She didn't say anything, just put her hand on
Mother's arm. Lie down with me, Albert . "
H e pulled the heavy covers from his bed and piled
them on hers. Then he turned off the tiny orange-tinted
light bulb under the big parchment lampshade. Minna
presently feel asleep. Corde, stretched beside her along
the edge of the bed, went into a state of blankness for
the rest of the night.
In the morning Minna was on the telephone again,
trying to reach Dr. Moldovanu, the passionate daugh
ter still fighting for her mother. Corde thought, She
can't accept that it's over, the end, she saw Valeria for
the last time. But that was a lot to ask. He was being
too sensible. It was one of his persistent failings.
And so there he was, as usual. It was morning, and
he was sitting in the room. He had swallowed several
cups of Gigi's coffee. It was too weak to revive him
after his night of blankness. He frowned at the packet
of mail from his office. After his catatonic night on the
edge of the bed, under the burdensome stiff weight of
the Balkan rugs, he was too tired, felt too tender and
sore inside, to take on those letters from Chicago. He
opened his briefcase instead and looked for the Beech
documents. He must get them read before Vlada
Voynich arrived. To be idle this morning was a bad
idea. If he didn't pull himself together he'd suffer from
random thoughts. Those were the worst-they ate you
up. Clearing an efficient space on the desk, he set
himself to study Beech's scientific papers. He began
with Vlada's abstract. Immediately he found his anti
dote to the distress of random ideas. "Beech picked
you, on the basis of those articles in Harper's, to be his
interpreter," she wrote. "And since I have been part of
his team for some years, he requested that I give you a
little preliminary guidance. I am glad you had the
opportunity to meet him. His reactions to you were
very positive. " (I liked him, too, thought Corde. Beech
149
150 SAUL BELLOW
was a terrific fellow. Also, to get an eminent man's
positive reaction was pleasing.) "The situation is of the
most urgent importance," he further read. "Beech
wants his case stated not only to the general public but
also to the Humanists. " This gave Corde pause. Who
were these Humanists, and why should Beech imagine
that they were a group to whom any case could be
stated? And if there was such a group, why should it be
inclined to pay attention to Corde? He considered how
to discuss this with a geologist like Beech. "You want to
understand humanist intellectuals? Think of the Ruling
Reptiles of the Mesozoic . . . . " Corde meantime read
on. "I think you said that you listened to the tapes he
gave you. In those he recorded his personal account of
the research that led up to his discoveries and explained
what they signified for the future of our species and,
consequently, why they presented such an emotional
problem for those who drew the inevitable logical
conclusions. " Yes, Corde had listened to the tapes. In
the first minute, Beech said they had been made last
summer in a Kansas bam. "Looking through the big
open door over the summer wheat fields," the scientist
had flatly intoned. "The Great Plains. My native
grounds."
Vlada had told Corde in Chicago, "Albert, it was my
doing, partly. I brought your articles to Beech's atten
tion because I knew he was looking for somebody who
had the necessary skills. Also the brains. " Vlada spoke
with the fully centered assurance of a stout woman. Her
face was wide and pale, the brown Balkan eyes were
large-no soft glances, but urgent business, shrewd
ness. She did not invite you to take part in dream
enterprises; she was an extremely shrewd lady. (At
moments her eyes did make personal confessions, too,
painful ones. But never mind that now.) Beech himself
had been more diffident. "After you've listened to
these tapes and studied the materials, perhaps you'd
consider further discussions leading to eventual collab
oration. Naturally, I have a special point of view, as the
man who directed the research-in the inside position,

right in the middle." Beech's mildness had a special
charm for Corde . What a nice man! And when you
considered what a terrific charge he carried, the respon
sibility for such frightening findings (would the earth
survive?), how gallant his mildness was. He said to
Corde, "You, the author of those special articles,
might-you just might-be able to blow the whistle. I
want to stop everybody in their tracks and force them
to follow. And you can be gripping. As with the blacks
you described in public housing and in the jails . . . "
"I didn't please everybody."
"I would assume not. That's exactly it. And when I
read your description of the inner city, I said, 'Here's a
man who will want the real explanation of what goes on
in those slums.' "
"And the explanation? What is the real explana
tion?"
"Millions of tons of intractable lead residues poison
ing the children of the poor. They're the most exposed.
The concentration is measurably heaviest in those old
slum neighborhoods, piled up there for decades. It's
the growing children who assimilate the lead fastest.
The calcium takes it up. And if you watch the behavior
of those kids with a clinical eye, you see the classic
symptoms of chronic lead insult. I've asked Vlada
Voynich to include Needleman's neuropsychiatric
findings from the New England Journal of Medicine
with the other papers. Crime and social disorganization
in inner city populations can all be traced to the effects
of lead . It comes down to the nerves, to brain dam
age."
Polite Corde, with silent lips, nodding, doubted this.
He wore a look of quiet but high dubiety. Once more, a
direct material cause? Everything had a direct material
cause? If you gave people employment , money, cloth
ing, shelter, food, protected them from infection and
from poison, they wouldn't be criminal, they wouldn't
be mad, they wouldn't despair? Sure, the right pro-
152 SAUL BELLOW
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X"i i i i Ai "i ⁄"i i ai "i
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Th� Dean 's December 153
"i ï di !i “ i OEi "i i i
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7"i i E"E i "i i ( i (74i
I" ¸" i "4i i "i "i G~E "i
"E 4i i i L " oi 5 i i !i
7"i " i i "4i i ( "E i E" !i "˜i 7i
( "E i i ii i ( @i i i ( i "˜˜*
!i (i "i L Ei ( Bi 5i i ( £i
(i "i 7 i 4i !i "i "47 i 4i i
r"7i !i i "i !i ! i G"i . " i
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E "E i!i E " 4yi E4i "i "E i
E 4ï Xi 4i EE i i !i E"i "4i
"i !i i i i i E( 4i i i 4E i !i
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P"i _Ei 4ª"E "i L E4i (Ki 7"i
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154 SAUL BELLOW
among the causes of wars and revolutions. Mental
disturbances resulting from lead poison are reflected in
terrorism, barbarism, crime, cultural degradation. Visi
ble everywhere are the irritability, emotional instabili
ty, general restlessness, reduced acuity of the reasoning
powers, the difficulty of focusing, et cetera, which the
practiced clinician can readily identify.
This irritability, this combination of inflammation
and deadening-by God , I feel it myself! And I certain
ly observe it wherever I look! If he had been at home,
Corde would have gone to the Britannica for more
information. Fat medical books jutted from the shelves,
within reach, hut he was ignorant of Rumanian, weak
in German. But for what Beech was getting at he
needed no encyclopedia. We couldn't ourselves ob
serve the dulling of consciousness since we were all its
victims, and we would be dulled down into the abyss
unaware that we were sinking. Tetraethyl fumes alone
could do it--engine exhaust-and infants eating flaking
lead paint in the slums became criminal morons. With
out realizing it, Beech had become a burning moral
visionary. He accused the engineers. Applied science,
engineering technology, these were the powers of dark
ness which had poisoned land, air and water, the
forests, the animals, the cities, and our own human
cells.
Here was an apocalypse-yet another apocalypse to
set before the public. It wouldn't be easy. The public
was used to doom warnings; seasoned, hell-it was
marinated in them. And there are evils, as someone has
pointed out, that have the ability to survive identifica
tion and go on forever-money, for instance, or war.
Those that are most determined to expose them can get
no grip upon them. In the current language, that of the
mass situation, nothing could be communicated. Noth
ing was harder to get hold of than the most potent,
i.e. , the most manifest evils. Here science itself, which
was designed for deeper realization, experienced a sin
gular failure. The genius of these evils was their ability
162 SAUl BEllOW
5i Ai i ii i i A 2ii Ai
i i i bF i i ~mFi i mi Si
=i }i F 'i i i = i AXi i i
i $i $g"i mi i FSi :i i i i m2i
g Sii i i FF =i 5i R 2i ai ,i
i $i i i ?i F$ii ??mi "i
2i $i i i rF? Fi F$2i i i
fi i $mi i i i i m2i H ƒ ,i i $i; i
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F 2ii i mi F =i A i i i b 2i
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:i i i mYi :‡i F,i mi i i i gmi
i $i m i Pi i i mi Xî i i wi
i $i mi g i i i kì i i i i
mi i i ,i $i $i Yi5 i i $ i i :$i:i
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fi i i Ui ri ?i $i i i gi ?i
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bi 2i+5 Vi i $i mi ?i i[ fifii
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F "i =i ‚i i :i i i mi ?i~mi
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gi i {gi r Yi [ i ,i i i i i
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ii $i i .i $i g Yi 5i $fimi i
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can rest her eyes in a dark booth. She has light-sensitive
eye pains, like me. She gets a splitting headache in the
courtroom. But after a few spoons of wooton soup she
can go back and face Detillion again. Grady prays for
her to faint--she won't faint. "
But Lydia Lester wasn't invited to sleep in the
Cordes' guest room. Minna didn't like having a stran
ger in the house, opening drawers, reading mail and
bank statements. She didn't put it that way. She said,
"You mustn't forget , Albert , that we'd have to leave
her here alone when we went to Mount Palomar."
Corde yielded. He didn't share her sense of privacy,
but he didn't argue; he let Minna have her way. He
regretted it now. It would have been good for the girl.
A protective atmosphere. Maybe another girl of com
patible temperament would have been willing to stay
with her. They would have looked after the place ,
watered the plants. (He still thought about his plants.)
And if you dido't run the showers the seal dried out in
the drains and you had sewer gas coming up. The
arrangement would have been compassionate. Practi
cal , too.
In the adjoining room , the women talked-they lived
on the telephone . The instrument was warm with
continual use. Corde kept his door ajar to hear what
was going on. Ignorant of the language, he interpreted
Minna's tones. And he was the man of the house. They
counted on him . Now and then one of them looked in
to tell him the latest; they didn't actually ask him for
advice, but he gave them plenty of it, knowing that it
would be disregarded for the most part. There was an
additional telephone oddity. All calls were monitored.
Somewhere in a burrow a man listened in. This agent
made no effort to conceal his presence from these
unimportant women. You heard him breathing, rattling
papers, grumbling. Sometimes he even cut in: "That
ain't what you said yesterday." Gigi said, "The man is
obstreperous. I believe it possible that he is drinking. "
Among the papers from Chicago Corde found a
1 64 SAUL BELLOW
letter from Rufus Ridpath. That pleased him. It was an
important gesture, a sign of support. Corde had written
passionately about the Ridpath case. No one else had
stood up for Ridpath publicly. Of course Ridpath was
not rehabilitated, but he had said to Corde , "At least
you put the main facts on record. " Mason junior
dismissed Ridpath as "your kind of black man." There
was too much of the freak or crank about Corde (liberal
opinion's way of dismissing him). His own way of
putting it: "If A. Corde is a man of strength, how come
his hands are shaking?" Still the truth about Ridpath
(or something like it) was now on record. No, it didn't
signify much, unless it signified to make a friend. Corde
achieved no practical result. Perhaps it was better for
you not to have Corde take up your cause.
One of Corde's respected colleagues at the college,
Sam Michaels, had observed, "There's less and less
connection between blacks and whites. In the past, in
spite of the silent war, there was a connection. Now the
blacks don't want it, don't seem to care for white
relationships." In Mason you saw an attempted rever
sal , a connection to be made on black terms. What
terms were those? Lucas Ebry's terms? They didn't
exist. Unreal! Young Mason's idea of boldness put him
in the servile position. Besides, Corde wrote , the
effective black "image" had been captured by the black
gangs , the Rangers and the El Rukins, and the outlaw
chieftains-black princes in their beautiful and elegant
furs , boots , foreign cars. They controlled the drug
trade. They ruled in the prisons. For young blacks, of
all classes, even perhaps for young whites, they provid
ed a powerful model. But Ridpath had nothing to do
with images, image-making.
Removed from his post as director of the County Jail,
Ridpath may have had to borrow money for his legal
defense. He won his case but lost his reputation. People
remembered the charges and forgot the acquittal-the
usual pattern. Again, Sam Michaels-a supershrewd
observer: "They couldn't prove the aggravated battery
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166 SAU L BELLOW
the witnesses moved away or died, and three, five,
seven years later there would be no case. That's the
most common. That's what your nephew hoped for.
Where the press is concerned, you caused great resent
ment by your articles, implying they were lazy and
cynical, and now you are their target of opportunity.
Quitman and I both tipped you off to the danger when
you were doing the research. Now they are in a position
to do their number on you. As I 1ook at it, the young
man's wife probably couldn't see who pushed him out
the window. It could have been either one. The prosti
tute is a tough gal, really fierce , and has a record of
involvement in homicides. The man is low-key, even
dull. There is no good way to appraise these people's
actions, they all happen in fever-land . . . . I thought
my impressions would be useful, knowing how much is
riding on the case for you . . . .
"
Corde had given a full description of Ridpath in

Harper's. He was a man of hillocky build, short in the
neck, with a powerful intelligent Negro head. His brief
arms were widely separated by his cylinder chest ; his
eyes, also wide-set, measured you with extreme detach
ment. Under this waiting broad-gauged gaze you were
to say why you had asked to see him. He was distrustful
at first. Close-shaven, his scalp went into furrows when
he raised his brows and began to speak. His ears were
small and neat. Although he was completely dressed,
coat and tie, nothing seemed in place. After several
meetings, Corde concluded that he had no more than
two suits, a gray and a brown. He also wore a belted
plaid trench coat-if gray on gray could be described as
a plaid. The hands, overlapped by shirt cuffs and coat
sleeves, were also neat, not big. His arms were, so to
speak, crowded apart by the high-breasted width of his
body. And his hands were certainly not the hands of a
"brutalizer." They couldn't have done much harm to
the killers who testified against him-not the hands
alone. But of course the indictment was for aggravated
battery; bludgeon, blackjack-what weapon he was
said to have used Corde couldn't remember.
Ridpath knew what "doing a number" was, because
the papers had done a great one on him. Front-page
close-ups made him look like Primo Camera in black,
and swelled and distorted his face as if he had
acromegaly-they had thrown Ridpath into the distor
tion furnace.
Corde sometimes said about himself that he was
often subject to fits of vividness. In ordinary contact
there was a commonsense indifference or inertia in
what you saw. But in a vividness fit you had the hillocky
man, the obese breast, small hands, short neck,
cannonball head-all of it. And then came what
Dewey Spangler, tempering sarcasm with sympathy,
called "poetry," "impressionism," "exaltation." Corde
couldn't say whether this was set off by Ridpath alone
or by the Chicago into which his investigation of
Ridpath had led him. Whatever the cause, the result
was highly nervous, ragged , wild, uncontrolled, turbu
lent. Corde had tried to clear Ridpath's reputation, but
Ridpath's gratitude and loyalty may have been severely
tested when he read what Corde had written about
black Chicago. The Dean himself may then have
seemed to be somewhere in fever-land. And down
town, in higher circles of influence, people may have
been saying, "What's with this Professor? What's he
talking? His pilot light is gone out."
In this emotional state, "investigative reporting" was
utterly out of the question. Wolf Quitman, Ridpath's
lawyer, must also have been puzzled by Corde. He
couldn't possibly have foreseen-well, who can foresee
exaltation? And Quitman wasn't, himself, an exaltation
type. He was tough, a very tough man who practiced
criminal law. His toughness, however, was not of the
repellent downtown Chicago sort. He was a clear
faced, ruddy, muscular, active man. Even his face was
muscular. His office was nothing at all like an office,
168 SAUL BELLOW
more like a comfortable living room. A woolen shawl,
presumably knitted by his wife, was folded on the
chintz-and-maple sofa, and there were begonia plants
all over the place. The begonias were set on glass
shelves across the windows. (Corde was bound to take
in the presence of plants. ) Evidently Quitman didn't
care to see City Hall over the way-a full block of
ponderous limestone. Quitman said to Corde , "Profes
sor, do you know what County Jail was like when
Ridpath took it over?"
"Some idea."
"It was on the barn boss system. The gang chiefs ran
it. Hard for you and me to imagine what went on there.
Only by general terms, the catchwords. Damn rough
scene. Drugs, rackets, homosexual rape. Plenty of
money changing hands. Buy damn near anything you
wanted. And people beaten and tortured. Lots of
weapons. If you could work loose any piece of metal ,
you made yourself a knife. If you soaked a rolled
newspaper in the toilet and hung it from the window in
winter, it froze into a club. You could kill a man with it,
and when it thawed where was the evidence? Not
exactly the Montessori school . Excuse me if I offend,
but professor-criminologists were brought in, and they
were afraid to go into the tiers and put down the bam
bosses, or even look at them. You can't blame them for
it, but they sat in the office and wrote reports, or
articles for criminology journals, while the suicide
figures went up and up, and murders higher and higher.
They didn't dare go into the tiers of the jail and they
couldn't take charge. "
"Ridpath went in?" said Corde.
"Of course. That's just what happened. He's a plain
kind of a man. He goes by duty. The Mayor put him
there, so it was his duty to take charge . "
"Nobody really expected that?"
"Who could have expected it? He'd probably say he
assumed it was the necessary thing to do. No, he
wouldn't even say that much. And the bam bosses
respected him. He grew up on the streets himself. . . .
He's a thoughtful fellow. "
Corde said, "Those are his people?"
"It's an attachment he lives for. There are plenty of
hustlers around who live off the black crisis. You've
met 'em, Professor, we've all met 'em. Now, I've been
going almost daily to that jail for years. There's where
my clients are, that's a joint I'm totally familiar with.
For Ridpath it was a sixteen-hour day, seven days a
week, and that's a place that leaves all the rest of them
behind."
"So you say he was living in his office?"
"Like a cause, Professor, not like a job. He cut down
murders and suicides. I don't think anybody could
control the rackets, beatings, stabbings , torture, bug
gering. He gave it the best try anybody could give. But
that didn't impress the political guys much. What do
you expect? This is a damn tough city, and damn proud
of being tough, and the County is the worst-what
you'd expect of Chicago. "
"And Ridpath's mission was to clean i t up," said
Corde.
"Out of the question completely," said Quitman.
"You must have some feeling for that-the savage,
subsavage condition. Otherwise you wouldn't be in this
kind of practice."
Quitman did not care for this remark. He turned it
aside.
"You know what was wrong? The man didn't remem
ber to play ball, and you have to play ball, sir-you
have to play it. County Jail has a big budget. Suppliers
and contractors came to the office (you understand who
was sending 'em) and he wouldn't do business. He said,
'If I don't buy your meat boned I can save sixty cents a
pound. I'm having it boned right here.' Too many
savings. He saved a million dollars out of his budget
and refunded it to the county. That money was sup
posed to be spent. What? Save dough by using the
kitchen staff? Fuck the kitchen staff! Rufus got a bad
170 SAUL BELLOW
name with the top guys. They thought he might become
dangerous politically, too. Why else was he refunding
from his budget? That's why they gave him the busi
ness. "
"Who?"
Plainly, Quitman was startled by the naivete of this
question. He made no answer. Corde later obtained
one from a Lakeview alumnus downtown-Silky Lim
popo, who had been a star high-jumper ("over the bar
like silk") and was now himself a criminal lawyer and a
longtime City Hall Watcher. "You asked him who.
Quitman wouldn't dream of telling you. Whoever
thought Ridpath might be dangerous, that's who. Quit
man would be nuts to tell you, and if he told you, you'd
be bananas to print it. How do you think those big guys
make their moves? They usually do it one on one, over
a drink, or while going from the eighth green to the
ninth tee. If any money has to change hands, it also is
one on one, cash in an envelope which goes into a box
at the bank. In Ridpath's case I doubt even if money
had to change hands. He was in the way, that was
enough. And just in case he did have political ambi
tions, the best thing was to dump on him. You'd like it
very much if Quitman named names and you could take
a good hefty cut at them evildoers. I can see that,
Professor," said Silky. "You and me, AI, we'd never
get anywhere with the politics. That's why I'm only a
watcher. The hanky-panky is all going to be secret
history, which nobody will ever write, not just because
those guys aren't writers, but because they love the
secrets . . . . They love 'em! Me, I deal professionally
with deviants and sociopaths, like Quitman. They'll
confide in you, sometimes. But the secrets at the top in
politics--never!"
"Oh , I won't be writing any expose, Silky. No
scoops," said Corde.
"What will you be doing?"
"Personalities, scenes, backgrounds, feelings, tones,
colors . . . Just between you and me, I wouldn't have
been surprised if the strain of sixteen to eighteen hours
a day in that place finally got to Ridpath. There must
have been plenty of provocation, times when you'd
want tO' lay violent hands on somebody. " But Corde
discovered that he was only speaking to himself.
Quitman himself would not talk too much. He and
Corde had sat silently for a time in the bright office,
figuring each other out. The garden of red begonias was
now taking the warmth of the sun and the knitted shawl
showed its red and iridescent fleece. What did such
people make of Corde when he visited them? He was
obviously a quiet dean type, no Watergate investigator.
During his chat with Quitman, Corde remembered the
close-mouthedness of G. 0. O'Meara , whom he had
interviewed at Meatcutters' Hall just last week.
O'Meara, about ninety years old, wouldn't give Corde
the time. of day. And there had been no talk of the knife
or the sledgehammer, the shambles , nor of strikes, nor
of scabs, nor of company police. O'Meara was now a
public man emeritus. Feeble, not quite with it, he still
cut a figure among the big shots of Chicago. Beautifully
respectful to the old guy, almost filial, they telephoned
him in his meatcutters' palace. He went to board
meetings, he attended banquets. There were testimoni
al plaques and scrolls and inscriptions on silver and
bronze all over the place. The O'Meara who received
the Dean was proud that he was a poet; full time, now.
He presented Corde with a book of his verses-love
sonnets to his wife. Yes! How the old boy had preened
t he last of his feathers. He made Corde listen to a poem
he had recited on the Jack Paar show. His breath was
perfumed with the penny candy he sucked continually.
There were jars of jujubes in front of him. Not one of
Corde's questions was answered, and when he got up to
leave, the old man said to him, "So you wanted me to
talk, but I didn't tell you a thing, did I?" Ancient
O'Meara, packed with guile, terribly pleased with
172 SAUL BELLOW
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Abruptly , Bucharest again-Minoa burst into the
room. All too plainly the news was bad.
"They phoned me from the hospital . "
"They , who?"
"The women from intensive care . One of them.
What she asked was, did I want them to light a candle."
" I see . "
I t was the end, then. A matter of hours.
"I told her, Of course! Please. "
"Yes. Certainly you did . "
" I didn't say anything to Gigi about this. You won't
either, will you?"
"No. I'm staying put right here , going nowhere
anyway. "
Minna wore the maroon o r mulberry-colored jersey
pants suit. She had lost so much weight that the belt
had slipped from the tunic down low on her hips. She
gave no sign that she wanted comfort from Corde. She
was right to keep her balance in her own way. If he had
put an arm about her shoulders it would have been
more for his own sake than for hers. Anyway, she went
out, again abruptly, as he was preparing to rise, so he
sat down again with a sudden sense that the chair
cushion under him had been shaped to Valeria's figure .
It was the same with the clothes in the armoire ; they
hung there with the shapes she had given them. If he
got into bed for warmth, it would be her bed. All this
combined to keep him fixed-stalled . He considered
what to do. There seemed nothing to do but what he
1 73
174 SAUL BELLOW
had been doing. Perhaps more effectively. But what
was there to be effective about? He didn't have it in
him to conceive how he might do better. He put his
fingertips under his glasses and rubbed his eyes. His
dependency on these goggles made him recognize how
much he was organized for observation and compre
hension. The organization, however, was insufficient.
The present moment brought this home to him. And
just now his thoughts took their shape from Valeria ,
just a s the cushion under him and the clothing in the
armoire did. Corde's conjecture was that she was now
unconscious. Vital signs must be diminishing, or the
women wouldn't have lighted candles. Those must be
burning in the outer room, away from the oxygen .
Medical technicians offering t o light a candle
imagine ! And Minna, whose subject was astronomy, so
badly wanting it . Please , do!
Despite the great weight of these conjectures , pic
tures, he leafed again through the papers spread over
the desk.
To resume: The notes he had sent to Ridpath had
gone into his articles with little revision, in the end. He
didn't care to develop them much. They were painful.
His motive had been to avoid playing up to readers,
making it all too easy for them to say, "You see how
bad we've become-all those appalling ghettos."
This was not what the Dean had really felt during the
many days he spent in courtrooms and hospitals .
Raising the indignation level-that easy satisfaction
was not his purpose . No, Dean Albert Corde, exercis
ing his citizen's right to see how justice was adminis
tered in his native city-he recorded exotic scenes in
the courtrooms at Harrison and Kedzie . However, all
the exotics were as native as himself. On his own turf,
which was also theirs, he found a wilderness wilder than
the Guiana bush. The lawyers had let him sit in the
front row with them. These were chicken-feed lawyers
waiting for the Bench to assign them to a case. You
could pick up a buck here. Some of these were elderly
men, down on their luck. The younger ones were built
like professional athletes , flashy dressers who went to
hair stylists , not to barbers. Beautifully combed , like
pretty ladies or dear small boys in Cruikshank's Dick
ens illustrations, they might have been either thugs or
bouncers.
Called up by the court clerk , groups of defendants
and lawyers formed and dissolved all day long from
endless dockets-dope pushers , gun toters (everybody
had a gun), child molesters , shoplifters, smackheads,
purse snatchers , muggers, rapists, arsonists, wife beat
ers, car thieves, pimps bailing out their whores. People
were all dressed up. Their glad rags were seldom clean.
Young men wore high-waisted , flaring leatherette coats
and high , puffed, long-billed caps; red-and-yellow
wooden platform shoes, or Wild Bill Hickok dude
boots ; or crisscrossed their shins with candy-box rib
bons. They wore dashikis, ponchos, cloaks, African
amulets, rings and beads-symbolic ornaments sym
bolizing nothing. There were brash strong women,
subtle black small women who had little to say. Their
skulls sometimes were terraced , very curious; or else
their hair was teased out , dyed, worked into small
viper-tangle braids; put up in blue, pink, yellow plastic
rollers. For all this gaiety of color, the gloom was very
deep. No one seemed able to explain what he had
done, who he was. It was all: "You brought us here,
you tell us who we are, and what you want with us."
Where did this gun come from? It was lying on a shelf.
Where? In a burned-out abandoned house where some
body was selling liquor on a plank counter. How did
you come to be there? I dunno.
You have before you an offender. This one is white,
androgyne in outline, male in dress, open-mouthed ,
mute , idiotic, frightened, too old to be a boy (the hair is
)
thin . The seat of his pants hangs down, full and dead,
and his hands are lame at his sides. The bristles of his
dewlaps are shaven in strips. He wears a turtleneck.
His lawyer says he has no criminal record, Your Honor,
176 SAUL BELLOW
never held a job but keeps house for his father and his
brothers, factory workers. It's a motherless household,
Your Honor. Regarding the packages of Turns he put in
his pockets at the supermarket, he pleads guilty, but it
was just one of those once-in-a-lifetime things. The
lawyer says, in effect , Look at this poor slob forty-year
old adolescent with these fat tits in a dirty jersey; if you
send him to County Jail they'll tear him to bits. They'll
beat him , they'll bum him with cigarettes for the fun of
it, they'll sodomize him day and night. He'll come out a
cripple. Better just give him a scare and send him
home. The judge nods, agrees and says, "What if I
sentenced you-do you know what they'd do to you in
jail?"
The next case is one of the sexual abuse of small
children. Pictures are produced of screaming kids
whose faces are spattered, covered with gobs of semen.
Who would do this? And who had the presence of mind
to take such pictures , waiting until the thing had been
done? Some undercover-agent photographer?
In his articles, the Dean had had much to say about
these "whirling lives . " He was sorry now about that.
He thought he had interrupted his accounts of County
Jail , County Hospital and Robert Taylor Homes far
too often with his unwanted and misplaced high
mindedness. On rereading, he himself passed quickly
over the generalizing, philosophizing passages. They
were irritating. He wouldn't, as a reader, have both
ered to figure them out. Straight narrative was a relief
and a consolation. "I go with Mr. Ridpath to the Taylor
Homes. " (Mr. Ridpath , bareheaded, is wearing his
gray-within-gray plaid coat. Men who knew him at
County Jail wave hello. There are snipers in the upper
stories . Also, gangs are operating everywhere.) "He
introduces me to Mr. Jones, one of the building engi
neers in the maintenance department. Vandalism here
runs to more than a million dollars a year, one-third of
the project's operating budget. 'We had ninety com
modes ill the warehouse last month, now we are down
to two . How do they break the commodes at such a
rate? Well, sir, being afraid to go at night to the
incinerator drop on each floor, they flush their garbage
down the toilet. The large bones stick in the pipes ; your
plumber tries to snake them out, and there goes your
bowl , cracked. Then there're light bulbs. We don't use
glass anymore , we use unbreakable plastic. Children
hold newspaper torches to them and they melt away.
The elevators-those are the biggest headaches of all.
They are not built for such hard use or abuse. It's not
just that people urinate in them . . . . ' " They commit
assault, robbery, rape in them. " 'We have had young
men getting on the top of elevator cabs, opening the
batch and threatening to pour in gas, to douse people
with gasoline and set them afire. Project guards,
trapped like this, have had to surrender their guns . ' "
Mr. Jones, black , a graduate of Tuskegee , is offered the
protection of a pseudonym. His large sensitive eyes
observe his fingertips on the edge of the desk as he
speaks. Then he rearranges his documents. These are
facts that should be known, and as Mr. Ridpath
vouches for the Dean, Mr. Jones agrees to talk, but he
doesn't feel quite safe.
Here in Eastern Europe , the morning's rain had
turned to snow. The flakes were large-their shapes
made Corde think of contact lenses-but as soon as
they touched the pavements it was all over for them.
He turned again to the passages his mother-in-law
had evidently read repeatedly. Some of these were
items culled from the papers. Nine inmates of County
Jail on November 25 sawed their way out of a segre
gated tier, handcuffed the guards, and then tried to
climb down with a ladder of knotted bed sheets.
Eight of them had been caught. The ninth, a man
named Upshaw, escaped. This Upshaw had been con
fined to a state mental institution because psychiatrists
had found him incompetent to stand trial in the de
capitation murders of a man and a woman and the
strangling of their young daughter. Escaping from the
178 SAUL BELLOW
"mental facility, " he had been apprehended and sent to
County. Now he was at large. Six of the eight who were
caught had been facing murder charges.
You see (Corde saw) , you begin to lose contact with
human beings and with the world . You experience
spiritual loneliness. And of course there are the classics
of this condition to study-or rather to mull over:
Dostoevsky's apathy-with-intensity, and the rage for
goodness so near to vileness and murderousness, and
Nietzsche and the Existentialists, and all the rest of
that. Then you tire of this preoccupation with the
condition of being cut off and it seems better to go out
and see at first hand the big manifestations of disorder
and take a fresh reading from them. Not quite sufficient
to say that at this moment of history the philosophical
problems are identical with the political ones. This is
true. It's okay. Only it's insufficient. You had better go
see in detail exactly what is happening. But there I go
again, and never mind that now. He turned the pages of
the magazine and found that his mother-in-law had
drawn double lines in the margins beside his account of
the death of Gene Lewis at Twenty-sixth and Califor
nia.
Brought from jail to the Criminal Courts Building for
sentencing, Lewis was heavily but carelessly guarded by
the sheriff's police, so that when his girl friend asked
permission to give him a book-to divert him (the legal
arguments would be long)-perrnission was granted ,
and she handed him a copy of Ivanhoe. This had been
hollowed out, and there was a gun in it . As Lewis was
handcuffed , the book was stuck under his arm. Corde
had later been allowed to examine this copy of Ivanhoe.
It was a boys' edition, with colored , glossy illustrations.
The inside had been carved out with razor blades , but
smoothly , a work of art, of love. The woman had been
described by witnesses as "a high-style Twiggy-type
chick with three-inch artificial eyelashes , and orange
dust all over her cheeks. She was very slender, about
six feet tall, she wore long skinny boots and was
gorgeous, out of this world . " Why should the armed
guards, those Chicago payrollers, bother w i a
book-any book? Let the guy have his book. Once
seated , Lewis snapped off the rubber bands under the
defendant's table. The woman had also put in a key. He
unlocked the handcuffs and took out the magnum. He
lined up all five beerbellies against the wall and dis
armed them. He didn't shoot anyone , but to prove t<>
Judge Makowski that the magnum was not a toy, he
fired a single shot into the floor. Then he raced out of
the courtroom. He dumped the guards' guns in a trash
basket and j umped into an elevator. But the elevator
was going up, not down. When he rushed out to change
on the next floor, he ran bang into a group of detectives
from Area Four. They shot him ten times in the head.
Paramedics from the Cermak Hospital came for the
corpse with a black plastic bag. The woman was never
identified. To look for her was a sheer waste of time.
Students at the college had objected, predictably, to
much that Corde had written. He had described broad
daylight rapes and robberies, sexual acts in publi�
places, on the seats of CTA buses, on the floors of
public waiting rooms , men on Sheridan Road spraying
automobile fenders with their urine . So the students
called a meeting to denounce the Dean for writing such
things . Miss Porson had gone there , and sat in the hall
to take notes. She was pierced with excitement, afraid
(she might have been identified as a spy) , and she was
indignant. But the militant students did not matter
much to Corde. He said to Miss Porson , "The usual
thing, looking for an issue , trying to catch me out. And
I brought it on myself for 'going public. ' But by next
week I'll be forgotten. " Miss Porson was wounded (so
deeply wounded , she said) for his sake. They had
misunderstood , they didn't know what a good man Mr.
Corde was. If you could trust her sympathetic heart ,
the Dean was an angel. Well, you couldn't trust her
sympathetic heart-sorry, but she flattered him with
these flights of generous passion; she flattered herself,
180 SAUL BELLOW
too, in her dramatic declarations. The Dean had his
vanities. He could count the ways , if you asked. But he
was not, if his observations were true, exceptionally
vain. Besides, he had a thing about objectivity. Perhaps
impartiality was a more accurate term. As age, experi
ence, and wear and tear reduced him physically, they
also revealed to him a strong preference for disinterest
ed judgments. It was nothing like nonattachment, not
negative objectivity. He was objectivity (no, impartiali
ty) intoxicated. The student militants, a small group
now, revolutionary Marxists (like the ones recently
murdered in Greensboro by Klan and Nazi riflemen) ,
passed a resolution declaring that the Dean was a racist
and that he owed a public apology "to Black, Puerto
Rican and Mexican toilers" for making them look "like
animals and savages. "
Well , you wanted a lead apron and other protective
devices when you approached all this dangerous stuff.
It gave off deadly radiations and shocks of high voltage .
It wasn't as if Corde had been unaware of such dangers ,
either, as if he had come out of his ivory tower after ten
years of seclusion unprepared , innocent, vulnerable ,
discovering what monstrous destruction the gods had
unleashed . It was not like that at all . He had been
getting around, reading the papers, keeping up with the
criminologists , the economists , the social theorists, the
urban analysts, historians, yes, and the philosophers
and poets-he was one of our contemporaries, after all,
and a wide reader. Wider than most. But he thought he
would say something about this Chicago scene drawing
on his own experience, making fresh observations,
referring to his own feelings, and using his own lan
guage. The steps by which he reached this decision
were certainly peculiar. When you retraced them, they
took you back to sources like Baudelaire and Rilke,
even Montesquieu and Vico; also Machiavelli; also
Plato. Yes , why not? He had left the Paris Herald in
order to give more attention to these great sources. Did
he want to write about Chicago? For once , it would be

done in style.
Without much success, he had tried to explain this to
Minna. She wished him well . Her own interests were
mainly astronomical. He was saying to her at breakfast
about a year ago that he had been rereading the
wartime letters of Rilke. He quoted to her: "Every
thing visible flung into the boiling abysses to be melted
down . . . but hearts-shouldn't they have the power
to hang suspended, to preserve themselves in a great
cloud?" Minna seemed to be interested in this. But you
couldn't be certain that you really had her attention.
Still he continued. He said, "Rilke wouldn't discuss the
war. He felt betrayed by his friends when they insisted
on talking about it. Not just because the present was
too brutal and too formless to be talked about, but
because you could only talk about it in newspaper
expressions. When you did that, he said, you felt
disgust and horror at your own mouth. But then there
was So-and-so, who said that you departed for the
eternal only from Grand Central Station. This was in
the day of the trains. What he meant, of course, is that
the contemporary is your only point of departure .
Hearts, sure , must have the power to hang suspended,
but they can't do it indefinitely . Shouldn't . . . " He
stopped. The morning must have been ill-chosen. For
Minna was astrophysically removed from him. The
signs were too plain to miss.
So he tested these truths of his against the blight of
Chicago. By no means was it all blight. There was
business Chicago sitting in its skyscrapers, monumental
banking Chicago, corporate electronic computerized
Chicago. There was historical Chicago, about which he
wrote many curious things--speaking of the old neigh
borhoods , their atmosphere, their architecture, the
trees, soil, water, the unexpectedly versatile light of the
place. He surveyed the views of noteworthy visitors
Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling, the famous Stead,
182 SAU L BELLOW
whose book If Christ Came to Chicago contained vivid
and valuable pages. It wasn't as if Corde had made a
beeline for the blight . Nor did he write about it because
of the opportunities it offered for romantic despair; nor
in a spirit of middle-class elegy or nostalgia. He was
even aware that the population moving away from
blighted areas had improved its condition in new
neighborhoods . But also it was fear that had made it
move. Also, it was desolation that was left behind,
endless square miles of ruin.
Occasionally he had tried at the breakfast table
before they went their separate ways to tell Minna what
he was up to. "Rufus Ridpath wants to help out. He
thinks it's important. He sends me lists of people to talk
to, and places that I should look at . "
H e should have known from the fixed look of his
wife's eyes not to talk to her now. Was he trying to
challenge the stars? She was concerned about her
husband (he was going into dangerous neighborhoods),
but it would have been wiser to postpone this discus
sion. She took a sharp tone with him. She said, "It's not
a good idea to get in so deep with this Ridpath . You
may look like two of a kind-out to get the establish
ment. "
"Yes, h e took a terrible beating. He's burnt up . He'd
like to get back at his enemies. I sympathize with him.
His feeling for his people is real. Are they part of
American society, or are they going to be eliminated
from it? To him this is not a theoretical question. If as
many as fifteen million people have already accepted to
be stoned out of their minds-and it isn't only the junk
use, but the anarchy, which is a sort of narcotic. And it
isn't just that he knows this-he is it himself, hu
manly."
"And why is he helping you-because he likes you?"
" Maybe he does. And maybe he has naive respe�t for
academics-thinks they are what they're supposed to
be. Morality and justice is their trade. After all, there
are libraries filled with marvelous books. "
"Are you really talking about him , or about why you
should take all this on?"
"Let me see if I can make it clear. "
But that was absurd . He couldn't explain himself. It
hadn't really been a matter of choice. Something had
come over him . He went over the passages marked by
Valeria to see whether they formed a pattern. She
would have been more interested in his emotions , his
character, than in Chicago.
There was, for instance , a long description of County
Hospital.
Dr. Fulcher, the hospital's Negro chief, had suggest
ed that Corde might find the kidney dialysis unit
interesting. Valeria had heavily underlined his account
of it.
The ancient County Hospital, yellow, broad and

squat. The surrounding neighborhoods have decayed
and fallen down. In the plain of collapse , this mass
stands almost alone. Beyond the clearings the giant
forms of the business district are gathered close. Be
tween the antennae of the Sears Tower a rotating light
blinks out. The weather is gray. The pulsating signal is
fluid, evidently made of metals and crystals whose
names only engineers might recognize.
I am guided by a Filipino nurse through old tunnels,
baked dry by mammoth boilers. The pipes drip rusty
water. By the door of the morgue, wheeled stretchers
line the walls. The dried blood would be scraped from
them if there were staff enough, but there is no money.
In these subterranean passages there are alternating
zones of heat and chill. Paleotechnic furnaces hugely
branching out send warmth up into the ancient wards.
The tiny Filipino woman brings me to a room in which
reclining chairs are covered with clean sheets. Beside
each chair is a complicated device, glass within glass,
the inmost compartment filled with blood. We stand
and watch the purification process. Hooked into a
machine, a large black man in worn work clothes is only
semiconscious. The seaman's watch cap has slipped
from his head. His face is hairy, not bearded but
184 SAUL BELLOW
unshaven, his big lips cannot close even when he tries

to speak. The small woman whispers to me. Kidney
patients seldom sleep well, and while their b lood is
being cleansed they sometimes fall into a stupor. The
process takes four hours to complete. Some of the
patients, their kidneys destroyed by a variety of diseas
es, are brought in several times a week. Lives have
been extended for as long as ten years.
Kidney patients look puffy. The legs and arms of the
veterans are disfigured by surgically produced fistulas.
Blood vessels are fused to increase circulation and
these conjoined or grafted veins and arteries make
great painful lumps which have to be soaked daily. A
woman is now brought in who can no longer be treated
through the arms or the legs. Her fistula is on the chest.
The cabdriver who picks up and returns all these
dialysis patients is an enormous black woman in red
jersey trousers. Her feet seem quite small. Her shoes
have high heels. Her straightened hair hangs to her
shoulders. She wears a cabby's cap and a quilted jacket.
Solicitous, she supports the sufferer, settles her into her
chair. These passenger-patients are her charges, her
friends. She wheels forward the television set. The sick
woman asks for Channel Two , and sighs and settles
back and passes out.
Some of the patients are bald from chemotherapy.
One old man has lost his black pigmentation. All that
remains of his blackness is an astonishing mole here
and there on his naked head, a strange man to see but
decent, sensible , and his thoughts in good order. A
retired plumber by trade, nonunion, he still takes an
occasional job. But then an even older man is brought
in who looks altogether senseless. The guide whispers
to me: "Dementia-not with it." They seat this old
man, and he waits, his jaw undershot, and his head,
from which the hair appears to have been scorched , is
hanging forward. The technician who takes care of him
is a Chinese woman. She works with beautiful skill,
washing the lumpy arm with disinfectants, then plug
ging in the tubes, light and quick, no sign of pain from
the old man. But then she blunders. A valve has been
left open on the tray, and immediately everything is
covered with blood. The suddenness of this silent
appearance and the volume of blood with which the
tray fills makes my heart go faint. I am almost over
come by a thick and sweet nausea, as if my or�ans were
melting like chocolate in hot weather. But the nurse ,
working under the blood, plugs the vent, stops the flow ,
gathers up the soaking napkins, spreads clean ones,
wipes the tubes. This act of getting rid of the blood is
performed with professional mastery, almost occult. I
am astonished by the Chinese woman's lightness and
speed. As for the old man, he has noticed nothing. The
Filipino nurse says, " You are a little pale. Do you want
to go?" As we walk away, she tells me about herself.
She is a nun and belongs to a nursing order.
It wasn't just the blood. If it had been ordinary
blood . But it was poisoned blood . It is said that these
people pin their hopes on kidney transplants. But that
will never happen. And these are dead men and
women. The metabolic wastes obviously affect their
brains. Nevertheless, these nurses and attendants are
curiously emotional , extraordinarily tender towards
these patients whom their machines keep alive, they
manifest a wonderful but also amorphous pity, a pow
erful but somehow indiscriminate love for these people.
Dr. Fulcher, County's chief, wears a beige silk shirt
of Oriental design , open at the throat , anything but
negligent in style, and a fawn-colored suit. A big,
graceful man, he is bald; the white hairs of his side
burns are wonderfully trimmed. About his neck hangs a
pear-shaped pendant of brownish onyx, and his fingers
display large , intricate silver rings. He has a great sense
of what it means to be at the top. Vividly articulate, he
is in command here, he has a presence. Where white
men would be diffident , he is exuberant , a regal popu
list in style. After all , he is at the head of this vast
(sinking) institution, and he acts it. He is a great
politician , he bears himself like an artist.
No wonder Harper's lost millions of dollars, printing

this sort of stuff. So Dewey Spangler would have said,
much amused . And Corde would have answered-but
186 SAUL BELLOW
he didn't answer, after all. The day was almost over,
and he thought , I've spent too much time over this
stuff. Why don't we go for a walk? There's still an hour
of daylight .
He said to Minna, "What about a breath of fresh
air?"
But there were cousins expected at four.
Gigi said, "Wouldn't you like a cup of the Twining's
tea you brought from Chicago?"
The thing happened for which, after all , they had come.
Well , Corde said to himself, they were here to see
Valeri�no? Blunter, to see her off? In spite of the
Colonel, the purpose was achieved-no?
The hospital called while they were at breakfast next
morning. Old Cousin Dincutza answered the tele
phone. Corde also came into the small parlor. The old
woman stood stooping, holding her lowered head to the
phone. She wagged her arm as if to forbid him to come
nearer. She made signals with her aged face . Yes , here
it was, it had happened. She put down the instrument
and said in a low voice, "Elle est morte. Valeria est
morte!" Then she hurried past him to the dining room ,
where he heard her reporting to the women.
When he came in, Minna was looking sternly absent
minded. She did not seem to need comfort from her
husband . She had made her preparations for this. She
said, "You were right, Albert. If we hadn't gone that
night I would never have seen her again. Just this
morning I talked to Dr. Moldovanu . Mother died a
little later, just before nine . "
" I see. Well, what i s there to d o now? I suppose
you've thought what to do. "
"Yes, of course I have. Tonight is Christmas Eve . "
" I t is , isn't i t . I've lost track. "
"We'll try t o set the funeral for the day after Christ
mas. We'll have to make the arrangements immediate
ly. Traian will help. I discussed it with loanna last night.
Petrescu came to the door just a while ago-before we
sat down to breakfast. I talked to him for about five
minutes. He already knew she was dead , I think. "
"Petrescu?"
"He keeps in touch . He's always been like this. He
watches from a distance . He made some suggestions
about what to do. "
"What needs t o be done? Death certificate? Under
taker? I'll make the rounds with you today ."
"Petrescu gave me a number where I can reach him
during the morning. And there's Dincutza . Being over
eighty, she knows a lot about such things . Whatever we
have to do , cigarettes will make it easier. "
"I must get more Kents. "
"That's what I meant. Traian will drive you over to
the Intercontinental. But will you see what Gigi's
doing?"
Tanti Gigi was in the kitchen with Dincutza. Corde
found them sobbing there. Then Gigi told Corde that
she wanted to go below to see Joanna, to tell her that it
had happened . The elevator was stuck. On the cold
staircase he put a shawl over Gigi's shoulders and
helped her down to the concierge's lodge. It didn't
make much sense that Gigi should go to Joanna, whose
job it was to tell the police everything. But why should
sense be made? In the concierge's cavern, the two
women sank to the small bed together, embracing and
weeping in the alcove . Valeria's photograph was on the
night table, and on the wall were pictures of the
188 SAUL BELLOW
dictator and his wife. Corde passed again through

the lobby, where workmen with hoes raised a dust,
mixing cement for the cracked walls. He climbed back
to the apartment. Minna, very thin and stem, staring
past everyone , black beneath the eyes, was discussing
details of the funeral with Dincutza.
Traian had come upstairs. He sat slumped in a
straight-backed chair by the door, buckled up in his
fancy multi-zippered leather jacket and being seemly
that is, decently downcast in the house of mourning. He
was completely at Minna's disposal. He had plenty of
time for her. It was no simple matter to obtain a death
certificate . First you had to go to the hospital. You
needed releases, authorizations, any number of official
papers. "We'll have to drive all over town," said
Minna. Corde was grateful to this Traian with the
Mexican wisps at the corners of his conspicuous lips.
He had taken the whole day off, Minna said. After
Christmas he would be available , too.
More cigarettes were bought at the valuta shop. A
pack or two of king-sized Kents saved dreary hours of
waiting. From the Intercontinental they drove to the
hospital, and after that to five or six government
buildings-Corde , riding in the front seat of the Dacia,
lost count. Traian knew what he was doing. Strange ,
what an expert he turned out to be. Traian in his leather
cap and jacket, and his eyes like the green pulp of
Concord grapes, was unbelievably effective. No wait
ing. He went to the head of the line. He presented
himself at the desk boldly, making the essential signals,
and putting down the cigarettes . He was a solid young
man. His belly gave him more pull with gravitational
forces than slighter people had, Corde thought. He
took charge of all the papers. Minna paid the fees,
signed the papers. She was firm , really very strong.
Corde would never have guessed how strong she would
turn out to be. She bad no practical abilities, she had
never needed them. Valeria had done all that. But now
Valeria's powers had passed to her (hitherto) absent-
minded daughter. This is how she'll attend to me , too ,
Corde thought. It was an entirely commonsensical
reflection; it hadn't the slightest emotional weight.
By early afternoon all the necessary documents had
been collected. In record time, Corde would have said.
Traian drove to the crematorium through a freezing
rain. Workers' housing blocks and government build
ings were covered with huge pictures of the President.
His face , five stories tall, flapped and floated in gusts of
rain. This must have been his way of resisting Christ
mas sentiment. He interposed himself.
Then the crematorium, standing on a hilltop, a huge
domed building. Just as you would expect, the grounds
were planted with small cypresses. Flanking the doors
there were bas-relief figures of Graces in mourning,
part Puvis de Chavannes , part socialist realism. Here as
elsewhere, Traian seemed to know just what to do.
Coide and Minna followed him to the desk (there was
no office), where they began to make arrangements
with the managing comrade . This man was dressed for
the chill of the enormous circular place. He wore
sweaters, shawls, an overcoat , an astrakhan hat. The
astrakhan was a phony. He was not at all difficult, this
official, not gloomy in the least , in fact he was more
than normally cheerful, sociable-he was gabby. The
paper work was done by his assistant, a young woman
in the seventh or eighth month of pregnancy. Pregnan
cy was said to keep the body warm , the effect of double
metaboli�m, or so Corde had heard. Anyway, she
appeared unaffected by the cold-she alone . There was
a green Nuremberg stove , but the comrade manager
had it all to himself. Another mourner had already
come up behind Corde. His coat was buttoned tightly
across his belly; he was a stout man, very big, with a
red, blustering face, but that was probably an effect of
grief aggravated by the terrible cold. His blue bubble
e es were fixed on the tile stove. He reached over
Corde's shoulders, trying to warm his distorted large
fingers. Meantime the seated comrade manager was
190 SAUL BELLOW
receiving slips of paper from his assistant and using two
kinds of mucilage to stick them to the documents
documents upon documents-and talking nonstop . He
asked whether a priest would perform a service . Priest?
Minna turned to Corde. No priest. Valeria was reli
gious but there would be prayers at the cemetery when
her ashes were placed in the family headstone. All that
had been prepared by Valeria herself. Then did the
family want music? There were two choices, the Cho
pin funeral march or, equally appropriate , Beethoven
-the slow movement from the Third Symphony. Four
minutes on tape. Minna chose the Beethoven. The
astrakhan hat nodded and nodded , writing on diligent
ly, holding the pen in his thumb and two middle fingers ,
the index pointing forward, riding above the papers.
Next, very courteous, anticipating baksheesh from the
American husband , he led the way to the center of the
hall. This was where services were held. There were
two single files of chairs for the principal mourners.
Under the center of the dome, in icy gloom , was
something that resembled a long metal barrel . It
opened longitudinally. This was the bier. When the
halves of the barrel closed , the body was mechanically
lowered for cremation-same mechanism in double
action. In this one spot, heat rose from below. Corde
and Minna drew away from it.
There were flowers here, all cyclamens. There wasn't
light enough to distinguish their colors . The plants had
been placed on the floor. Here they thrived like
anything-low temperatures; just what they wanted .
Above them, square containers of ashes were stacked
like canisters of Twining's tea. Each carried a photo
graph , and dates of birth and death, and an appropriate
legend : "Militant ," "Engineer ," "Teacher." So many
contemporary faces, like pedestrians -snapped by a
sidewalk photographer. Titese must have been victims
of the earthquake. Witnesses said that tall new build
ings had turned to powder as they collapsed. But why
were these tea boxes still here? Because there was no
consecrated ground prepared for them? Traian ex
plained this to Minna. The regime was short of ceme
teries. Graves were at a premium. But why should
there be such congestion-wasn't there plenty of land
beyond the suburbs? Trembling Dincutza had spoken
of this at home . She criticized no one, of course. She
only said that Valeria had bought graves in the year of
Dr. Raresh's death, when she was still in the govern
ment. She had raised the granite monument and built
two benches. She owned several other plots as well.
One had been promised to Engineer Rioschi , who used
to drive her quite often to the cemetery to tend the
Doctor's grave. Dincutza stated shrilly (sometimes this
kind old woman resembled Picasso's horse in Guerni
ca), "Nous savons combien elle aimait son mari. "
Rioschi, you understand, didn't want to be stacked with
these other cans in the crematorium when his time
came, so he had been glad to drive Valeria. That had
been their deal. He was a single man, you see.
The gray astrakhan now moved more quickly before
them. Corde assumed that he was leading them to a
chapel of some sort , a place where friends could view
the body before the service. But no such thing. He
brought them into a curved corridor where there were
curtained recesses, tall and dim. Then Corde was
astonished to see a pair of shoes sticking through the
green-tinted transparent curtains. He was brushed by
the soles, by the feet of a corpse. Next were a woman's
feet, in high heels. In these cold recesses or cribs,
corpses were laid out in their best clothes. Each one lay
just visible in a shallow coffin shaped like a small punt
and lined with dimity stuff, not much more than
cheesecloth or insect netting. One tall corpse with a
black Balkan mustache had his homburg set beside his
head. He clasped his briefcase to his chest.
Lord , I am ignorant and a stranger to my fellow man .
I had thought that I understood things pretty well. Not
so.
The comrade manager said that he had wanted to
1 92 SAUL BELLOW
show Minna where Valeria might be brought from the
hospital next day. "No , thank you, no," said Minna.
The hour for the service was fixed for ten o'clock on
the morning of the twenty-sixth.
The funeral parlor was next. Coordination was the
problem-the hearse to be sent to the hospital, the
body to be ready for it .
In the dark shop, finished coffins were stacked
against the walls. They were only half-coffins , really,
lidless. An elderly workman had one on his trestle,
tacking in the flimsy two-thread lining. Careful tucks
made a simple ruffle along the top. Backed up against
the tall tile stove, the place of privilege, an obese old
woman in multiple sweaters and a circular fur hat
repeated the order hoarsely as she wrote it out. The
wisps of her hat matched the hairs of her whiskers. Her
lips worked inwards continually. She was not chewing;
she had no teeth. She seemed to be tasting her own
mouth. She ordered the men about, growling and
bullying, but she became happy when Minna paid her
off and Traian gave her two packages of American
cigarettes. As she shoved the money into the drawer
she simultaneously heaved up her clumsy body to reach
for the Kents.
Corde said, "Do we go home now?"
"Yes, there's nothing else to do today, except to see
if I can place an announcement in the papers. That's
the next thing. Then Gigi and I have to choose Valeria's
clothes for the funeral. Traian will take them to the
hospital. "
They steered back through the freezing streets. The
only heat he had felt all day came from under the bier.
Yesterday he had suggested to Minna that they go out
for fresh air. Now he wanted only to get back to his
room.
Returning, they found the dining room table- sur
rounded by old cousins . They came with small presents
for the mourners . Gigi, wearing a black dress, was
unwrapping cakes and bottles at the buffet . The cakes,
like the old ladies who had baked them, were dimly
spicy . Gigi told Corde , "You had two calls, one from
overseas--! think your college in Chicago. They said
they would call agai n . " And the other? Dewey Span
gler, thought Corde , reporting on his efforts with the
White House .
He did not linger among the cousins. He felt used up;
the round of offices, the crematorium, the coffin shop,
had tired him deeply and the labor of French conversa
tion was too much for him.
The cousins didn't really want to talk to him , any
way; they were only being polite. This was no time to
swap French phrases . He went to his refuge, his
sanctuary , his cell. He had his private bottle there, and
his bed; the flowers also. Towards the flowers he felt
slightly negative now, as if they had betrayed him by
blooming at the crematorium . An effort of reconcilia
tion might be necessary. The irrationality of this did not
disturb him. If this was how he was, this was how he
was.
The telephone rang and Minna looked in and said,
"For you, my dear . "
He picked u p the instrument. "Albert? It's Dewey.
So far, no luck with those Georgia yokels. I can keep
trying . . . . "
"Thanks, Dewey. No point now . . . . "
"Oh? Sorry. When did she pass away?"
"Early this morning. Funeral the day after Christ
mas."
"You may not want to keep our date, " said Dewey.
"I'd understand. "
"When are you leaving?"
"Evening of the twenty-sixth."
"Why not the same afternoon-after the funeral? I
probably won't be needed then. There'll be lots of
callers . "
"Yes, that makes good sense. Not a bad idea t o get
away for a while and have a drink. It must all be
completely foreign. "
194 SAUL BELLOW
"Not completely . "
"Not insofar a s you liked that old woman . "
" I did , yes . "
"Foreign-! mean, to be a n American in a foreign
family. That I call an unusual experience . You didn't
tell me that Minna's mother had been a friend of Ana
Pauker, and knew Thorez and Tito. I found this out
yesterday from an old-timer. He told me about her and
that whole Stalinist generation . "
"These people were no Stalinists. They were just
unpolitical people who got into politics. " Corde was
beginning to wonder whether Dewey didn't scent a
story in Valeria. After all , he owed his syndicate two
columns a week.
"How is your wife taking it?" said Dewey.
"At the moment she's busy with arrangements.
Doing fine . "
"Yes," said Dewey. "It tends to hit one later. "
"I've often heard that said . "
"Poor girl. Say, before I forget, there's n o news out
of Chicago about your case. Unless you've heard from
other sources. "
"It's the holiday lull. Jurors would raise hell if they
didn't get their Christmas . "
"Well , Albert, I'll check back t o see i f it's conve
nient, after the funeral . I'm pretty busy here, but
there's always a sort of gap before airport time."
Hanging up , Corde glanced into the dining room but
didn't show himself. There were bowls of eggplant
salad on the table. Dinner would be late, after the
cousins went home. You didn't get much to eat here.
Leftovers,. But in the West everybody ate altogether
too much and sometimes he imagined that overfeeding
made people toxic, slowed their thinking. He was
trying to· account for the recent increase in his own
mental acuity. It now seemed to him that he was
thinking more clearly here. Evidently fasting and dis
ruption of routine were beneficial . But if his ideas were
more clear they were also much more singular. For
example: Valeria was certainly dead. She had died, and
she was dead, and last arrangements were being made.
But he couldn't say that she was dead to him. It
wouldn't have been an accurate statement. One might
call this a comforting illusion, a common form of
weakness, but in fact there was nothing at all comfort
ing about it, he could take no comfort in it. Nor was it
anything resembling an illusion. It was more like an
internal fact of which he became conscious. He hadn't
been looking for it. And he was not prompted to find a
"rational" cause for this. Rationality of this sort left
him cold. He owed it nothing. It was particularity that
interested him . . . .
Again the phone sounded off, and Corde picked it
up. He had a hunch that it would be Chicago , and he
didn't want Minna to take it. He was right. The Provost
was calling. "I wish you a Merry Christmas. " He
inquired how they were. Ah , bad! Very sorry indeed to
hear the news. He asked to have his sincerest condo
lences conveyed. Corde rumbled, "Thanks. Very
thoughtful of you, Alec. "
One of the shrewdest operators that ever lived, the
Provost was also very strong-the perfect, up-to-date
American strongman . You felt his muscle the instant
you engaged him. No one was more smooth , more
plausible, long-headed, low-keyed than Witt. A man of
masterly politeness, ultra-considerate, he had decided
(elected in cold blood) to adopt the mild role. That was
all right with Corde , by and large. Okay. He was willing
to play any man's game and accommodate his needs, if
he could, but he was beginning to find the Provost's
highly perfected manner hard to take, especially hard
since the onset of the troubles.
"I would so like to express my deepest sympathy to
Minna . Is she there? I am so sorry to hear about her
mother . . . .
"
"I'm letting her sleep," said Corde.

"Ah, she must need the rest, poor thing." Minna's
high standing, her academic importance, shielded
196 SAUL BELLOW
Corde from the Provost . He had never really grasped
that, but he understood it fully now.
"I don't suppose there is any way to wire flowers to
Eastern Europe ," said the Provost.
"There may be ; you can find out more easily at your
�nd than I can here . "
"Oh, for gosh sakes, I wouldn't dream o f troubling
you with that, Albert. You must have your hands full."
"Is there anything new on the legal side?"
The Provost said, "You may not have heard that you
were subpoenaed by your cousin. "
"Is that so?"
"Mr. Detillion wanted to put you on the stand to
establish the heavy involvement of the college in this
case. I've checked into that with our legal depart
ment. . . .
"
"With some real lawyers . . . "

"Oh, there's no comparison," said the Provost. "I
don't want to downgrade your cousin; you may have
residual sentiments about him. But these are crack
lawyers. Of course, you'd never have to get on the
stand. The matter was gone into with the State's
Attorney. But the newspapers gave the subpoena some
play, which was what your cousin wanted. How come
all the French names in your family, Albert?"
"The family explanation is that we were leftovers of
the Louisiana Purchase. Napoleon sold us all to Thom
as Jefferson so that he could pay for his invasion of
Russia . . . . Well, I'm sorry to be a cause of so much
trouble to the administration. " _ _
"Nonsense , Albert. There's no real trouble, just

silliness."
Witt would concede him nothing. The likes of you
can make us no trouble , was what he was saying. There
was nevertheless real bitterness, and Corde could feel
it . It came down from the communications satellite
perfectly clear, pellucid . Corde was in an odd condition
anyway, one that made it possible for him to see the
Provost from all -sides-the jut of his upper teeth, the
gill-like creases under the ears, the continual play of
deference and kindliness, command, pressure , threat
back and forth. No, he didn't like Corde. The Dean's
appointment had been a mistake , and it was the
Provost's job to clear up the mess. Corde was an
outsider, he hadn't come up from the academic ranks,
hadn't been shaped by the Ph. D . process. It wasn't
even clear why he had wanted to become an academic,
and even an administrator.
The Provost was still speaking. "Our people have
met with Mr. Grady about this crazy subpoena. Since
you're out of the country and can't be served, it's all in
fun . "
"And m y nephew?"
"He came in, surrendered , and your sister posted a
bond, so the young man is out. The grand jury's
indictment probably won't stick, when it's reviewed,
because the boy didn't have a preliminary hearing. But
all the prosecution wanted was to establish that he had
threatened the witnesses, which I'm afraid he really
did . "
"I doubt that he fired a pistol at them . "
"Your guess is better than mine . "
"Because I'm his uncle?"
"Oh, no," said Witt, suave again. "We can't be
responsible for our relatives ; we don't choose them. "
"Only I seem to have more bad relatives than the
normal person."
"We'll work it out, believe me ," said the Provost.
Witt had from the first found it necessary to lead
Corde step by step, rehearsing him, instructing him,
making certain that he would interpret budgetary,
educational, institutional policies appropriately. But (it
was Corde himself saying all this for him) there was
something unteachable about the Dean, an emotional
block, a problem, a fatum. One of the permanent
human problems, in every age of mankind (Corde saw
it now) , was the problem of not being a fool. This was
truly terrible. Oh, that oppression, that fool-fear. It
198 SAUL BELLOW
pierced your nose, blinded your eyes, split your heart
with shame. And to Witt , a man of power, Corde was a
fool. To conceal such an opinion was an operational
necessity for a Witt. It was the sort of sacrifice (a
sacrifice , not to let your opinion dart forth , and scream
and mock) you had to make if you were to be a genuine
administrator. That sort of thing you had to hold down.
But then there was Witt's brutal infrastructure , which
could not be covered up. Witt, thought Corde , had a
brutal drive to let him know, to transmit by his
perfected devices, what a fucking fool he was. The
Dean had made Witt very angry. He had bollixed
everything up with his muddled high seriousness. It was
not so much the Lester case that angered the Provost.
The real vexation was that he had published those
magazine articles without a clearance from the college.
Not to submit them for approval was out of line ,
unheard of, dangerous to the last degre�wild! Corde
had attacked-whom hadn't he attacked: politicians,
businessmen , the professions, and he had even loused
up the Governor. Maybe suggestions had come to Witt
from high places , by discreetest channels, that this was
one highly expendable dean. For his part, Corde didn't
want to hide behind Minna. But Minna was involved.
For Witt there was a delicate tactical problem. But the
Provost , Corde believed, took professional satisfaction
in his maneuvers, in operations calling for an unusual
degree of skill.
He heard the Provost saying, "Lester was one of our
graduate students, and we couldn't have backed away
from this case , it had to be followed up. I authorized
the reward , you remember. "
Corde did remember that. But he recalled also how
plainly the Provost was put off by the Dean's emotion
alism, his flushed face , his swollen eyes. "What ver
dict does the legal department predict? " Corde was
asking, really, how the college hoped to come out of
the case.
"Not pushing for a death sentence. "
" I never had that in mind. "

"Yes," said Witt. "You expressed your views in
Harper's clearly enough . Capital punishment-ac
cording to you , nobody's hands are clean enough to
throw the switch . What was your expression? Oh, yes,
'the official brutes' . . . "
What Corde had had in mind . . . as if the Provost
cared what position Corde had taken. Witt despised
him. Nor, to tell the whole truth, did Corde altogether
blame him for it. He was able to admit to himself that
he had been out of kilter when he wrote those articles.
Dewey Spangler was right , in part. There was a sort of
anarchy in the feelings with which those sketches were
infused, an uncontrolled flow of "poetry, " the truth
passion he had taken into his veins as an adolescent.
Those sketches were raw , where was the control of
deeper experience? There wasn't any. He had publicly
given himself the fool test and he had flunked it. And
now came a man like Alec Witt, Witt who represented
power, qualified by the higher deviousness, as power
usually was. Corde had challenged this "real-world"
power without reflective preparation, without taking
account of the higher deviousness. He had left himself
wide open. And today of all days-Valeria lying in the
hospital morgue!-this depressed the Dean fiercely.
But oddly enough, when the wave of depression re
turned from its far low-down horizon it brought back
the idea of having another go at the thing. Do it right
next time!
But the Provost had not telephoned from the free
world in order to discuss capital punishment with a
high-principled idiot dean. Both parties now made a
pause. Witt was about to disclose the true reason for his
call . The deep Atlantic stream brimmed between them.
They were--what-seven thousand miles apart? You
weren't able to have conversations like this in the old
days.
"When do you plan to be back?"
"For the new semester. Minna will have to settle up
200 SAUL BELLOW
her mother's affairs-the estate, such as it is. She also
needs to get to Mount Palomar; she missed her tele
scope days . "
"You haven't seen Vlada Voynich yet?" said the
Provost .
"We've been expecting her. Her brother said she'd
be here for Christmas. "
"She's been telling what a n interest you've devel
oped in Beech's work. "
"Purely amateur," said Corde.
"Of course it would be. In the nature of the case. Are
you planning, actually, to write about it?"
Corde in his bass voice answered, "That was Beech's
idea-he proposed it. He sent me the material . "
"That's what Vlada told me. You haven't decided
yet, though , have you?"
"It hasn't been on my mind much. I've put off
thinking about it. I wouldn't want to jump into any
thing. If there's going to be more controversy . . . I
need to be sure I've got a good grasp of the facts. "
This should have reassured the Provost somewhat.
Instead it made him press a little harder. "These
environmental, ecological questions are very com
plex. "
"I wouldn't d o i t i f it were only that. I don't care to
get mixed up in environmentalism. But I am interested
in Beech himself. The personality of a scientist, his
view of the modem world. But I'll have to wait until
Minna's able to discuss it. I can't take it up with her
now. I'll find out more from Vlada Voynich. She's
bringing more material . "
"So she told m e , and I asked h e r also t o give you
copies of letters. . . "
.
"What sort of letters?"

"Things that have come in-in connection with those
Harper's pieces of yours . "
"What, complaints to the college , objections?"
"Nothing to disturb you. Lots of curious items.
Amazing how worked up people can become and what
a variety of responses one can get. You'll find them
really thought-provoking. I wouldn't think of upsetting
you at a time like this. And you don't need to worry
about things here; they're under control. I keep a
careful eye on Lydia Lester. She was splendid on the
witness stand. But you saw that yourself. So fragile ,
and turned out to have real guts. "
Each o f the Provost's final words touched an anxiety
in Corde.
"It won't be a happy Christmas for poor Minna. Tell
her at least that we think we can get another date for
her at Mount Palomar. We'll be looking for you after
the first of the year."
Corde explained to Minna under the dim chandelier
of the dining room table-the taped black wires hung
twisted from the broken plaster. "Alec Witt . Merry
Christmas, and condolences. Don't worry about the
telescope. And Vlada Voynich is on her way . "
Gigi served a n early dinner. I t was eaten listlessly.
For Christmas Eve the table had been laid with linens
embroidered in red. Corde went to bed early . The
twenty-fourth of December had lasted long enough.
On Christmas morning there were presents beside
their coffee cups. The old girls saved gift-wrapping
paper and ribbons from year to year. There were
treasures of all kinds in the cupboards , boxes of pre
Communist ornaments . Gigi brought to the table the
Christmas angels Minna remembered from childhood.
They were designed to float slowly on wires radiating
from a disk set in motion by the heat of a small candle.
The toy would not work. "Valeria always could make it
go," Gigi said. She wore deep mourning and her neck
was strained as she bent to strike more matches. She
bad combed out the bobbed hair but at the back it still
looked like a hayrick. "It may be the candles," she said.
She went through the drawers of the buffet , looking for
the right kind. She didn't know where Valeria had put
them. Corde tinkered with the wires . Americans were
supposed to be mechanically gifted , but he could get
202 SAUL BELLOW
nowhere with them. He only bent the toy badly. The
four angels hung motionless. That was the end of them.
Valeria had taken their secret with her.
"Then open your presents ," said Gigi. She had given
Minna a peasant blouse . For Corde there was a large
gold pocket watch which had belonged to Dr. Raresh .
Surprised , he stared at it--graceful numerals, a shapely
swell to the tip of the hour hand. To set it you depressed
a tiny catch with your thumbnail. Gigi said, "This was
the present Valeria decided you should have this year."
He slipped it into the pocket of his cardigan and as he
bent to sip his coffee he felt the pull of the golden lump
near his waist. He reckoned that after London, and
especially after the Rowlandson exhibition and din
ner at the Etoile, Valeria had accepted him as a full
member of the family. When he had tried to take her by
the elbow because she was listing, could no longer keep
her balance, when she pulled her arm away, it had
depressed him (something like the streak of a black
grease pencil over his feelings) ; he felt that she was
irritated with him. But that hadn't been what it meant.
On the contrary, it was then that his probation had
ended.
The morning was sunny. He studied the watch at
length in the bedroom . He read Vollard's memoirs and
reminiscences of painters--no boards, no back, nothing
but a bundle of stitched paper. Minna had no time for
him. She and Gigi spent most of the morning deciding
how to dress Valeria. Which dress or suit would she
have preferred, or shoes , or blouse or ornaments? They
decided that she should wear a greeny-blue silk suit
Minna had bought in London for her, and a green and
black paisley scarf, dark blue shoes. Traian took the
clothing to the hospital, together with a photograph to
show how Valeria put up her hair.
Gigi, who had been so passive while Valeria was
dying, turned assertive and militant, insisting that the
government must be "forced" to give her sister a public
funeral. She told this to Petrescu when he turned up on
Christmas Day. Petrescu surprised Corde by the genu
ineness of his grief. He carried himself (his swooping
belly, his wide undercurves) with soldierly decorum but
his eyes were ,red, tragic pouches under them. He was
indulgent with Gigi, he sat sighing and let her talk. She
told him (defying the listening devices) that the least
the government could do was to acknowledge the
fidelity of Dr. Raresh to the Party and the Revolution
and the contributions made by this family to surgery,
public health , and also astronomy. He answered pa
tiently, his voice rising in spirals until it broke in the
higher registers. Minna said to Corde how decent of
him it was to come, and how loyal he was to the family.
"I think he had no personal secrets from my mother. "
Bound to have secrets, in his racket: Corde silently
dissented . However, Petrescu's face certainly was ru
ined. If intensive care doctors could light candles for
the dying, secret agents could mourn their adoptive
mothers. There was sentiment all over the place.
Petrescu had his family side, his soft side . He was
delicately, even endearingly attentive to the ladies. He
was thoughtful towards Corde, too, and brought him
two green bottles of Chenin Blanc, unobtainable except
in the commissaries for high-ranking bureaucrats.
Gigi explained to Corde what she was doing. "I am
insisting that my sister should not have a commonplace
funeral. She ought to be exposed publicly in the great
lobby of the Medical School, as her husband was before
her. It is only right and proper to give her official
recognition. "
"Will they give it?"
"We shall insist. I am requesting Mihai Petrescu to
approach old members of the Politburo. They remem
ber her. They are aware, as younger ones are not.
There was typhus. There was starvation. Valeria asked
Truman for supplies. He sent them. The Russians put
their own labels on. Requesting drugs and food from
America was one of her crimes. "
Minna agreed with her aunt, while Corde was think-
204 SAUL BELLOW
ing that you saw eyes like his wife's in famine photo
graphs. She was starving herself. It would take months
to restore her.
"If not the lobby of the Medical School , then the
Memorial Hall next door to the crematorium ," said
Gigi.
Petrescu, downcast , much troubled, nodding, stroked
the fuzz of his fedora, stroked the dense hairs grow
ing from his ears. In spite of its wide bottom, his
broad body sat uncomfortably. He often pressed his
palm over the thin hairs streaking backwards on
his skull. His fingers were actually trembling. His
pouchy eyes occasionally were lifted to carry silent
messages to Corde, to another man. These poor
women were innocent . . . they didn't know, couldn't
understand. Corde believed that Petrescu had tried to
make a stand against the Colonel, had been beaten
quickly, clobbered , forced to back off. Now, after
Valeria's death , he may have gotten official permission
to be helpful to the family. Petrescu's rank in the
security forces must have been fairly high. Whatever he
had to do in the line of duty (don't ask!) he atoned for
in this household by services, by emotional deeds,
tender attachments. He was an old-consciousness type
in a new-consciousness line of business. Gigi declared ,
"I assure you, Albert, and I will even swear, that my
sister shall have her due. Until now my sister, who was
a figure in the history of our country, has been denied
notice in the national encyclopedia. But she shall have
it. I shall go to the greatest lengths . . . . "
But Minna privately told Corde, "Today I can't even
get the newspapers to print a notice of the funeral. "
"Why d o you suppose . . . ?"
"The obvious reasons. I ran away from them. And
my mother was expelled, then refused to rejoin the
Party. I think the funeral will be well attended, though.
Just word of mouth. The telephone doesn't stop ring
ing. My mother is a symbol. . . . "
"Of what?"
Minna whispered. "It isn't political, it's just the way
life has to be lived , it's just people humanly disaffect
ed." She covered his ear with cupped hands and said ,
"The government may be afraid of a demonstration at
the Medical School. "
Corde , who didn't believe this for a moment, nod
ded. He said , "Sure. I understand . But what would the
demonstration be?"
"I told you. It would be sentiment. To approve what
Valeria personally stood for. Just on human grounds .
. . . Why don't you go and rest for a while, my dear.
You're tired. This is hard on you . I can see. Vlada is
coming later. She arrived this morning . "
A clear Christmas Day. The room was surprisingly
wann, the sun heating the windows . It made him feel
how badly he needed a breather, "a few minutes of
Paris," as he called it-some civilized calme, or luxe.
He picked up the crumbling paperbound Vollard, his
Souvenirs d'un Marchand de Tableaux, and read a few
paragraphs about the testiness of Degas. "You'll see,
Vollard , they'll raid the museums for Raphaels and
Rembrandts and show them in the barracks and the
prisons on the pretext that everybody has a right to
beauty! " A crabby old bigot , and he looked so fero
ciously at a child who annoyed him in a restaurant that
he scared the little girl into fits and she vomited on the
table. But for this nastiness he gave full compensation
in lovely painting and bronze. Whereas a fellow like the
Provost . . . But the Provost was no genius-monster,
he was only . . . And Corde now tried to protect his
sunlit breather, the moment of peace , but he could not
beat off Alec Witt and he presently surrendered to
Chicago thoughts. The Provost's signal was easy to
read : for the sake of the college , he was protecting
Beech. Scientists were far too naive to protect them
selves, and Corde was especially dangerous because he,
too, was in a way an ingenu . Once a man like Witt
decided that you were not a man to observe the discreet
convention, that you talked out of tum , and that you
206 SAUL BELLOW
were a fool, nothing but trouble, you were out. He
would do everything possible to stop Corde from
writing a piece on Beech-"one of those pieces of his . "
And you couldn't altogether blame the guy, thought
Corde. It's true, I was carried away. Hearts hanging in
the dark too long, and going bad, spoiling in suspen
sion, and then having a seizure, an outburst. In most
things I don't hold with Dewey, he's too psychoanalyti
cal, but he's clever enough in his own way or he
wouldn't have become such an eminence. Give him his
due . And he says I was settling scores with Chicago. I
must admit that I was retaliating on my brother-in-law,
on Max Detillion and on many another.
Tired of false opinions, and of his own distortions
most of all, Corde admitted that, yes, he had wanted to
give it to them (to a generalized Chicago) , to stick it to
them. To stick it, and to make it stick so that they
couldn't shake it off. Now, a man in a position of real
responsibility, a Witt , for instance, he protects his
institution from everything immoderate. That's how
the silky style is justified. That's his method for dealing
with disruption: never lose your cool with the disrupt
er, gag him with silk, tie him in knots with procedures.
Corde would class that as one of the hard , essential jobs
of democracy. I gave no sign that I was going to tum
disruptive. Dumb thoughtful sweet, was my type, mull
ing things over. Then I turned out to be one of those
excessive, no-inner-gyroscope fellows he can't stand.
So he despises me ; what of it? I detest him, too. That's
neither here nor there.
The publication of his articles had also given Corde a
profile of the country, a measure of its political opin
ions, a sample of its feelings. "I administered my own
Rorschach test to the U . S . , " Corde said. Before leav
ing Chicago he had already received a batch of letters
forwarded by the editors of Harper's. "A flood of
mail," one of the assistants wrote. Liberals found him
reactionary. Conservatives called him crazy. Profes
sional urbanologists said he was hasty . "Things have
always been like this in American cities, ugly and
terrifying. Mr. Corde should have prepared himself by
reading some history. " "The author is a Brahmin . The
Brahmins taught us to despise the cities, which accord
ingly became despicable . " "Mr. Corde believes in
gemutlichkeit more than in public welfare. And what
makes him think that what it takes to save little black
kids is to get them to read Shakespeare? Next he will
suggest that we teach them Demosthenes and make
speeches in Greek. The answer to juvenile crime is not
in King Lear or Macbeth. " "The Dean's opinion is that
a moral revolution is required. His only heroes are two
self-appointed possibly dubious benefactors . " "You
should be congratulated for opening up these lower
depths of psychology to your readers, giving us an
opportunity to look into the abysses of chaotic think
ing, of anarchy and psychopathology."
Curious what people will pick on. About Macbeth
Corde had only noted that in a class of black schoolchil
dren taught by a teacher "brave enough to ignore
instructions from downtown," Shakespeare caused
great excitement. The lines "And pity, like a naked
newborn babe , Striding the blast" had pierced those
pupils. You could see the power of the babe, how
restlessness stopped. And Corde had written that
perhaps only poetry had the strength "to rival the
attractions of narcotics , the magnetism of TV, the
excitements of sex, or the ecstasies of destruction."
It was certainly true that Corde had found himself in
Chicago looking for examples of "moral initiative,"
and he had come up with two: Rufus Ridpath at County
Jail ; and Toby Winthrop, also black, an ex-hit man and
heroin addict. He hadn't found his examples in any of
the great universities, and there was a large academic
population in Chicago. What Alec Witt probably would
like to know was why Corde hadn't made his search for
moral initiative in his own college. Why, thought
Corde , I did look there , up and down , from end to end.
Corde was not a subversive , no fifth columnist, nor had
208 SAUL BELLOW
he become a professor with the secret motive of writing
an expose. He hadn't been joking when he quoted
Milton to his sister Elfrida: "How channing is divine
philosophy"-the mosaic motto on the ceiling of the
library downtown. And the universities were where
philosophy lived , or was supposed to be living. He had
never forgotten the long, charmed years in a silent
Dartmouth attic, where he had read Plato and Thucydi
des, Shakespeare. Wasn't it because of this Dartmouth
reading that he gave up the Trib and came back from
Europe? To continue his education, he said, after a
twenty-year interruption by "news," by current human
business.
It was Ridpath who had sent Corde to Toby Win
throp at Operation Contact. He drove to the South
Side on a winter day streaky with snow. You could see
the soot mingling with the drizzle. Corde hadn't come
to this neighborhood in thirty years. It was then already
decaying, now it was fully rotted. Only a few old brick
bungalows remained, and a factory here and there. The
expressway had cut across the east-west streets. The
one remaining landmark was the abandoned Engle
wood Station-huge blocks of sandstone set deep, deep
in the street, a kind of mortuary isolation, no travelers
now, no passenger trains. A dirty snow brocade over
the empty lots, and black men keeping wann at oil
drum bonfires. All this-low sky, wind , weed skele
tons, ruin-went to Corde's nerves , his "Chicago wir
ing system," with peculiar effect. He found Operation
Contact in a hidden half-block (ideal for muggings)
between a warehouse and the expressway. Except on
business , to make a sale, who would come to this place?
He parked and got out of the car feeling the lack of
almost everything you needed, humanly. Christ, the
human curve had sunk down to base level, had gone
beneath it. If there was another world , this was the time
for it to show itself. The visible one didn't bear looking
at.
Well , Corde entered the "detoxification center" and
climbed the stairs. Two landings, a wired-glass door

where you showed your face and were buzzed in. You
found yourself in a corridor, and then, unexpectedly,
you came into a room furnished with umber and orange
sofas . Philodendrons hung in all the corners. Here he
met someone who encouraged him, a wiry, whiskery
Negro who said, "Go on, man--go , go; you on the
right track. " The tentative, pale, blundering Dean
amused him .
Winthrop's office window was heavily covered in
flowered drapes of pink and green. The ex-hit man sat
waiting for him . His trunk was enormous, his thighs
were huge, his fingers thick. No business suit for him.
He was dressed in matching shades of brown-a knitted
shirt in beige , a carmel-colored suede j acket, chocolate
trousers , tan cowboy boots. He wore a small brown cap
with a visor, a boy's cap. His face curved inward like a
saddle. He was bearded and, like Dr. Fulcher at
County Hospital, he had pendants on his neck and big
rings on his hands. He picked up the note Corde had
sent him. In the lamplight the folded paper seemed no
bigger than a white cabbage moth. "You a friend of
Rufus Ridpath , Professor? He asked me to talk to you.
Thinks we can do each other some good . Maybe he
thinks you might be able to do something for him. Set
the record straight."
"What do you think?"
"I think he was the best warden County ever had,
and I was a prisoner before and during his time . . . . "
The body of this powerful man was significantly

composed in the executive leather chair. If you had met
him in the days when he was a paid executioner, if he
had been waiting for you on a staircase, in an alley, you
would never have escaped him. He would have killed
you , easy.
"You can't do much for Ridpath. The guys who did
the job on him don't have to worry about you or me,
my friend. It's their town. Their names are in the paper
every day. No trouble at all to get names. But that's all
210 SAUL B ELLOW
you could get. Rufus doesn't really expect anything
from you. He just likes you. Now, what did he tell you
about me?"
"He said that you and your friend Smithers founded
this center to cure addiction without methadone, as you
cured yourself."
This man with the black nostrils, impressively staring
under the visor of the childish cap, interrupted him. He
said, "You bein' polite. He said I was a hit man, right? I
was, too, a hired killer working for very important
people in this city. I was tried three times for murder.
Those important people got me off. Ask me how, and I
identify you as a man who don't know this town."
How many people he had murdered , he didn't care
to say. But then he nearly killed himself with an
overdose of heroin. Someone should have warned him
how strong it was. After he took it he recognized it for
what it was. As it began to take effect, he saw that he
was dying. This happened in a hotel room near Sixty
third and Stony Island , the end of the el tracks, the tip
of rat-shit Woodlawn. "I'm goin' to tell you just a little
about this."
A friend came and put him into a tub of cold water,
but he saw that Toby was dying and beat it. "No use
hangin' around. But after eighteen hours of death, I
came back."
He lifted himself from the tub, and just as he was, in
wet clothes, he went down into Sixty-third Street and
caught a cab to Billings Hospital, to the detoxification
unit. Because of his terrifying looks, the receptionist
signaled the police , who grabbed him in the lobby. But
they had nothing to hold him on at the station, only
vagrancy and loitering. "I bailed myself out. Always a
big bankroll in my pocket. I got another cab back to
Billings, but this time I stopped in an empty lot and tore
the leg off a table. I went in with it under my coat, and I
showed it to the receptionist. I said I'd beat her brains
out. That's how I got upstairs. They gave me the first
methadone shot. I was in a hospital gown, and I went to
the toilet and sat on the floor to wait for the reaction. I
put my arms around the commode and held tight to it. "
"But you didn't go through with the methadone
treatment . "
"No, sir. I did not. Something happened. When I
came in I had the table leg, I was ready to kill. I would
have killed the lady if she called the cops again. But in
less than an hour I was called to stop a riot. I had to
stop a man breaking up the joint. He was a black man,
as big as me, and he had delirium tremens. He smashed
the chairs in the patients' sitting room . He broke a
coffee table, broke windows. The orderlies and nurses
were like kindergarteners around him. He was like a
buffalo. I had to take a hand, Professor. There was
nothing else to do. I separated from the commode and
went out and took control. I put my arms around the
man. I got him to the floor and lay on the top of him. I
don't say he was listening, but he wasn't so wild with
me. They gave him a needle and we laid him on a cart
and put him in bed . "
"That was Smithers?"
"Smithers," said Winthrop. "I wish I could explain
what it was all about. I've told this before . It's as if I
kept after it till I could find out what happened that
moment I took control of him. Maybe it was because I
died twenty-four hours before. Maybe because my
buddy left me in the bathtub in the hotel-that was all
he knew how to do for me . But when they put Smithers
in bed, I sat by him and minded him. "
"This was when your own treatment stopped. "
"I wouldn't leave him . They had to measure his body
fluid. I held the man's Johnson for him. You understand
what I'm saying? I held his dick for him to pee in the
flask. He had a bad ulcer in his leg. I treated that, too.
That was his cure, and it was my cure, at the same time.
I was his mother, I was his daddy. And we stayed
together since. "
"And made this center. "
"Built it ourselves i n this old warehouse--the dormi-
212 SAUL BELLOW
tories, kitchen , shops downstairs to teach trades. We
bring in old people from the neighborhood-the old,
they're starving on food stamps, scavenging behind the
supermarkets. The markets post guards, they say they
don't want the old people to poison themselves on
spoiled fish. We need those old people here. They teach
upholstery , electrical work, cabinetmaking, dressmak
ing. They teach respect to young hoodlums, too. But it
isn't only hoods. We get all kinds here. We take all the
kinds--w hite, black, Indians, whatever color they
come in. From the richest suburbs, from Lake
Forest . . . "
"You'd call this center a success?"
Winthrop stared at him a moment. Then he said,
"No, sir, I don't call it that. They come and go. It takes
with some. I could name you a many and a many it
never could save. "
Until now Winthrop had sat immobile i n his chair,
but now he turned and, to Corde's great surprise,
began to lower himself towards the floor. What was he
doing? He was on his knees , his big arm stretched
towards the floor, his fingers booked upward. "You see
what we have to do? Those people are down in the
cesspool. We reach for them and try to get a hold.
Hang on-hang on! They'll drown in the shit if we can't
pull 'em out. Some of 'em we'll get out. Some of them
will go down. They'll drown and sink in the shit-never
make it. " With an effort that caused one side of his face
to twitch , he labored to his feet and backed himself into
the chair again.
"You're telling me that the people who come
here . . . "
"I'm telling you, Professor, that the few who find us
and many hundred of thousand more who never do and
never will--they're marked out to be destroyed. Those
are people meant to die, sir. That's what we are looking
at. ,
It was at this point, out of earnestness and without
seeing how it would be taken by the public, that Corde
began to speak in his articles of "superfluous popula
tions," "written off," "doomed peoples. " That didn't
go down well. You could use terms from sociology or
Durkheim or Marx, you could speak of anomie or the
lumpenproletariat, the black underclass, of economi
cally redundant peasantries, the Third World, the
effects of opium on the Chinese masses in the nine
teenth century-as long as it was sufficiently theoretical
it went over easily enough. You could discuss welfare
politics, medical and social work bureaucracies, with
out objection. But when Corde began to make state
ments to the effect that in the wild, monstrous setting of
half-demolished cities the choice that was offered was
between a slow death and a sudden one, between
attrition and quick destruction, he enraged a good
many subscribers. Something went wrong. He wrote
about whirling souls and became a wb4ling soul him
self, lifted up , caught up, spinning, streaming with
passions, compulsive protests, inspirations. He experi
enced, as he saw when he looked back, a kind of air
anarchy. He began to use strange expressions. He
wrote, for instance, that Toby Winthrop was a "recon
stituted" human being, a "murderer-savior" type ; that
Winthrop was therefore an advanced modem case.
Why? Because the advanced modern consciousness was
a reduced consciousness inasmuch as it contained only
213
214 SAUL BELLOW
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slacks, to prevent escape . He drove to a remote alley
and assaulted her sexually. Then he locked her into the
trunk of his Pontiac. He took her out later in the day
and raped her again. By his own testimony, this
happened several times. At night he registered in a
motel on the far South Side. He managed to get her
from the trunk into the room without being seen.
Possibly he was seen; it didn't seem to matter to those
who saw. In the morning he led her out and locked her
in the trunk again . At ten o'clock he was obliged to
appear at a court hearing to answer an earlier rape
charge. He parked the Pontiac, with Mrs. Sathers still
in the trunk, in the official lot adjoining the court
building. The rape hearing was inconclusive. When it
ended he drove at random about the city. On the West
Side that afternoon, passersby heard cries from the
trunk of a parked car. No one thought to take down the
license number; besides, the car pulled away quickly.
Towards daybreak of the second day, for reasons not
explained in the record, Spofford Mitchell le� Mrs.
Satbers go, warning her not to call the police . He
watched from his car as she went down the street. This
was in a white working-class neighborhood . She rang
several doorbells, but no one would let her in. An
incomprehensibly frantic woman at five in the morning
-people wanted no part of her. They were afraid. As
she turned away from the third or fourth closed door,
Mitchell pulled up and reclaimed her. He drove to an
empty lot, where he shot her in the head. He covered
her body with trash .
She was soon discovered. Exceptionally prompt, the
police descended on Mitchell. He was found in the
garage behind his father's house , cleaning out the trunk
of his Pontiac, hosing out the excrements. He con
fessed, then retracted, confessed again. He was being
held in County Jail for trial. These were the facts Corde
learned from the papers. He was then preparing his
article. What might the real content of these facts be?
216 SAUL BELLOW
He made inquiries and was referred to the Public

Defender in charge of the case, Mr. Sam Varennes. ln
Harper's he gave an account of his long conversation
with Varennes, whom he described as
. . . a strong bald young man with prominent blond

eyebrows and a wide throat , a college athlete in his
time . The views we exchanged were enlightened , intel
ligent , liberal-did us both credit. To be appointed
Defender you generally needed some sort of backup or
sponsorship , still such appointees are often well
qualified conscientious public servants. Mr. Varennes
is a scholarly lawyer, well nigh a Doctor of Jurispru
dence. I think he said Stanford.
He asked first what feelings I had about the case. I
admitted that I was subject to claustrophobia, and that
I believed I might rather be killed than get into the
trunk of a car at gunpoint, that sometimes I had
fantasies in which I said , "You'll have to shoot me . "
But if I were pushed i n and had the lid slammed o n m e I
would hunt for a tire tool to hit the gunman with at the
first opportunity. To lie in a trunk was like live burial. I ""
could never endure it. I then said, "Only think how
Mrs. Sathers must have begged the man every time he
opened the lid . "
H e seemed , t o m y own surprise , slightly surprised b y
this. "You think she prayed for her life?"
"Begged or prayed-'Let me out ! ' "
Mr. Varennes did not care for what I was telling him.
He had put himself in a posture to make an effective
argument for his client (a man, after all, a human being
like the rest of us), so he was much disturbed. I think
also that I myself-the interviewer-disturbed him. I
was disturbed . He said , " You suppose? I hadn't
thought about that . . . . "
I said , "Oh, but she must have . "

"And h e was indifferent, are you saying?"
"I wouldn't say indifferent. I'm trying to guess
whether he understood her emotions. If you say some
thing in all the earnestness of your heart, and wonder
why this doesn't . . . with this earnestness it must-it
must get through. If h e had understood h e r pleading he
would have been a different kind of murderer."
"The kind who feeds on the victim's pain, like this
mass killer Gacey, who specialized in boys? Part of his
sexual kick? Subtler and more perverted . . . ?"
"Gacey seems to have tortured and mocked his
victims."
"So you don't believe Mitchell was the same?"
, "Classification of psychopaths is technically beyond
me. My only guess about Mitchell is that he was just
bound for death. If you've taken that fast direct track ,
you may be deaf and blind to something so exotic as the
pleading of a woman whom you've locked in your car
trunk."
"A more primitive person," said Varennes.
I saw that the Defender was examining me on my
social views. Mr. Varennes is a muscular man. Even his
throat has muscles, a pillar throat. I think he pumps
iron. He said next, "As part of the defense we may
argue that Mrs. Sathers accepted the situation."
"Does he say she did?"
"Some of the time she rode in the front seat with
him. She was seen by witnesses when he stopped at a
bar to buy a bottle of Seven-Up. When he went in to
get the drink and left her, she sat and waited. She
didn't run away. You might say he had tied her feet."
" I didn't. But it's probable that she was dazed. "
"As dazed a s a l l that?"
"Felt she was already destroyed . There must be a
sense of complicity in rapes. The sex nerves can stream
all by themselves. If people think they're going to be
murdered anyway when it's over, they may desperately
let go."
"Sexually?"
"Yes. In spite of themselves, spray it all out. They're
going to die, you see. Good-bye to life . "
"That's quite a theory . "
"Maybe. B u t that's quite a situation," I said. "And
with the special confused importance , the peculiar
curse of sexuality or carnality we're under--we've
placed it right in the center of life and connect it with
savagery and criminality-it's not at all a wild conjec-
218 SAUL BELLOW
ture. The truth may even require a wilder interpreta
tion. Our conception of physical life and of pleasure is
completely death-saturated. The full physical emphasis
is fatal. It cuts us off. The fullest physical joining may
always be flavored with death, therefore. This is why I
said Spofford Mitchell was on the fasttrack for death
fast , clutching, dreamlike , orgastic. Grab it, do it, die. "
I reminded myself that I was talking witb a gymnast.
He had backed off his head as if to get a different slant,
and took me in again, extremely curious. So I resumed
the interviewer's role. "It may be wrong to pry into the
last hours of Mrs. Sathers. Well, we were discussing
why she didn't make a run for it when he went into the
bar. Is it a fact that witnesses saw her waiting
alone? . . ."
"I've taken the depositions . "

" I' m trying t o imagine the despair that kept her from
opening the door. And suppose he had chased her
down the street; would anybody have helped her?"
" Maybe not, against an armed man. Yes , when you
put it that way. I suppose that's what the prosecution
would say." His next comment was, "My team and I
are on these homicides year in year out. We can't get up
the same fervor as an outsider."
I made a particular effort now to recover my inter
viewer's detachment or professional cool. I am obliged
to admit that I never know why I say certain things
when I'm agitated. It was nice of him to call it "fervor" ;
it was far more insidious, a radical disturbance. But he
was a nice man. His looks appealed to me. I liked his
serious eyes and strong bald head. And this induced me
to talk more.
His examination continuing, for he was examining
me (as if there were something about me that was not
strictly speaking contemporary), he t ried me on the
professional side and invited me to discuss the situation
in broader terms--the mood of the country , the inner
city, urban decay , political questions. He asked me to
describe the pieces I intended to write. Why was I
doing them, and what would they be like? I explained
that the Cordes had moved up to Chicago from Joliet
more than a century ago and that I had been born on
the North Side and thought it would be a good idea to
describe the city as I had known it , and that my aim was
more pictorial than analytical. I had looked up my high
school zoology teacher, for instance , whom I had
helped with the animals, feeding them and cleaning the
cages. Also a self-educated Polish barber who used to
lecture boys on Spengler's D�cline of che Wesc while he
cut their hair. I had traced him to Poznan, where he
was now living on his Social Security checks from
America. I revisited the Larrabee Street YMCA. Also
the Loop. The Loop's beaneries, handbooks, dinky
dives and movie palaces were wiped out. G igantic
office towers had risen everywhere. Good-bye forever
to the jazz musicians, and the boxing buffs who hung
around the gymnasiums, to the billiard sharks from
Bensinger's on Randolph Street. Then I mentioned a
number of contemporary subjects, among them the
new housing developments south of the Loop in the
disused freight yards ; and the mammoth Deep Tunnel
engineering project, the Cloaca Maxima one hundred
and thirty miles long and three hundred feet beneath
the city. Not wishing to ruffle him , I made no reference -
to my interest in the abuse of "immunities" under
federal law by U . S . attorneys (refractory witnesses who
rejected the immunity offer were sentenced for con
tempt of court; judges had the right to send them to jail
for a year). It would have done me no good to discuss
this with Mr. Varennes. Nor did I mention my interest
in the case of Rufus Ridpath, the same people who had
dumped Ridpath having perhaps appointed Varennes.
Whether I could be trusted, what my angle was, why
I wasn't somehow one hundred percent contemporary
in my opinions-these were the Public Defender's
questions. I came well accredited-journalist , profes
sor, dean. But in spite of these credentials and the
prospect of favorable publicity for his team, I was
suspect , he smelled trouble.
He was right, too. A certain instability . . .
Corde laid aside Valeria's copy of Harper's and tried

again, reframing the interview, as if he intended to
220 SAUL BELLOW
write a new version, wider in perspective, closer to the

real facts, taking bigger forces into account. The meet
ing with Varennes was one of those occasions when (if
you are like Albert Corde) you are strongly tempted to
say what is really on your mind. Very dangerous. In
ordinary life you dig far below your real thoughts. But
if you come soaring by, why shouldn't the fellow shoot
you down? On the other hand, he may be the excep
tional case, and perhaps he won't shoot. True,
Varennes was running any number of dependability
tests. Did I play by Chicago rules or would I cut some
exotic caper and embarrass or damage him? For his
part, the Provost had decided that I didn't accept the
Chicago rules. He had trusted me, and I had brought
tons of trouble down on him. But Varennes also
buttered me up, you might say. He led me on. He said
that on his first undergraduate holiday in Paris he had
read my columns in the Herald Tribune. He asked
whether I was familiar with Solzhenitsyn's Harvard
Address. Yes , and here and there I agreed with it. I
hedged a little .
Varennes was checking my papers, as it were, to see
whether my liberal sympathies were in order. I said that
liberalism had never accepted the Leninist premise that
this was an age of wars and revolutions . Where the
Communists saw class war, civil war, pictures of catas
trophe, we only saw temporary aberrations. Capitalis
tic democracies could never be at home with the
catastrophe outlook. We are used to peace and plenty,
we are for everything nice and against cruelty, wicked
ness, craftiness, monstrousness. Worshipers of prog
ress, its dependents, we are unwilling to reckon with
villainy and misanthropy, we reject the ho"ible-the
same as saying we are anti-philosophical. Our outlook
requires the assumption that each of us is at heart
trustworthy, each of us is naturally decent and wills the
good. The English-speaking world is temperamentally
like this. You see it in the novels of Dickens, clearly. In
his world , there is suffering, there is evil, betrayal,
corruption, savagery, sadism , but the ordeals end and
decent people arrange a comfortable existence for
themselves, making themselves cozy. You may say that
was simply Victorianism , but it wasn't-isn't. Modern
businessmen and politicians, if they're going to give
billions in credit to the other side, don't want to think
about an epoch of wars and revolutions. They need to
think about contractual stability, and therefore assume
the basic seriousness of the authorities in Communist
countries-their counterparts , officials, practical peo
ple like themselves , but with different titles.
More of this real-sounding discussion, mutually com
forting ideas. Those were the stillborn babies of intel
lect. Dead, really. I realized that long ago. They
originate in the brain and die in the brain. Although it's
true enough that a simple belief in progress goes with a
deformed conception of human nature.
But Varennes got a bang out of this discussion. He
didn't want all the time to be thinking about lousy rapes
and murders. He knitted his fingers and said he had
been reading a new study of the Munich mentality
Chamberlain's inability to dope out Hitler's designs .
He asked me, "Where did you get your own catastro
phe exposure?"
I said, "In Germany in the forties when I was young.
But probably even more by what I read as a young kid
in my father's library. He was an artilleryman in the
First World War and collected books on the subject. I
read a great deal at an impressionable age about trench
warfare. In some sectors they paved trenches in winter
with frozen bodies to protect the feet of the Tommies.
You knew it was spring when the corpses began to cave
in under your boots. I didn't stop with Remarque and
Barbusse , or Kipling. I went into the memoirs of
infantrymen and sappers. I recall an eyewitness ac
count of rats eating their way into corpses, entering at
the liver and gnawing their way upwards, getting so fat
they had trouble squeezing out again at the mouth.
There should be a shorthand for facts in that category.
222 SAUL B ELLOW
Or maybe there ought to be a supplement to the Book

of Common Prayer to cover them. They have rear
ranged our souls. This is Lenin's age of wars and
revolutions. The idea has gotten around by now."
The Public Defender said, " Except the Americans?
The last of the ideology-negative nations?"
Needing time to think over these propositions,
Varennes turned his head to one side, looking out from
the big but unopenable window of his air-conditioned
office. He was a steady and strong man. He would be
steady when he worked out at the gym ; also steady and
strong while he was cutting his medium-rare New York
sirloin at Gene and Georgetti's; presumably he would
be strong in the sack, a pillar of muscle on the bosom of
some swelling, soft girl. I, instead , was folded skinny
into my chair, hands clasped low in my lap (between my
cambered thighs-the legs criticized by my nephew) ,
with my swelled eyes, yoked goggles, whitening brow
hairs, pale dish face and long, uncomplaisant (only
complaisant-looking) mouth. Varennes went on, "Our
catastrophe is these inner city slums? Or-tell me if I
follow you-the Third World erupting all over?'' And
as well as I can remember, he went on to say I was
suggesting that a man like Mitchell was an unconscious
agent of world catastrophe, or an involuntary one. "Do
you identify him with terrorists or Third World fanat
ics? Are you asking whether we-the bourgeois
democracies-are capable of coming to grips with the
catastrophe mentality?"
The thought I had then I can recall clearly. I said that
America no more knew what to do with this black
underclass than it knew what to do with its children. It
was impossible for it to educate either, or to bind either
to life. It was not itself securely attached to life just
now. Sensing this, the children attached themselves to
the black undetclass, achieving a kind of coalescence
with the demand-mass. It was not so much the inner
city slum that threatened us as the slum of innermost
being, of which the inner city was perhaps a material
Th� Dean's Deambu 223
representation. As I speiJed this out I felt that I looked
ailing and sick. A kind of hot haze came over me. I felt
my weakness as I approached the business of the
soul-its true business in this age . Here a dean (or a
writer of magazine articles) came to see a public
defender to talk about a limited matter and their
discussion became unlimited-their business was not
being transacted . I was losing Mr. Varennes. Anguish
beyond the bounds of human tolerance was not a
subject a nice man like Mr. Varennes was ready for on
an ordinary day. But I (damn !), starting to collect
material for a review of life in my native city, and
finding at once wounds, lesions , cancers, destructive
fury, death, felt (and how quirkily) called upon for a
special exertion-to interpret , to pity, to save! This was
stupid. It was insane. But now the process was begun,
how was I to stop it? I couldn't stop it.
Varennes seemed to glimpse this and qe said, "It's
still not clear to me what you have in mind, overall. "
I took a different tack for the moment . I said, "You
may have seen a long article in the paper recently. Fifty
prominent people were interviewed on what Chicago
needs to make it more exciting and dynamic . "
"I think I saw that . "
"Some o f these people were lawyers, some were
architects, one the owner of a ball club; also, business
executives, advertising men, journalists and TV com
mentators, musicians, artistic directors , publishers, city
planners, urbanologists, a famous linebacker, merchan
dising big shots, et cetera. "
"The beautiful people," said Varennes.
"Well , now, some said we needed outdoor cafes like
Paris or Venice, and others that we should have devel
opments like GhirardelJi Square in San Francisco or
Faneuil Hall in Boston. One wanted a gambling casino
atop the Hancock Building; another that the banks of
the Chicago River should be handsomely laid out. Or
that there should be cultural meeting places; or more
offbeat dining places , or discos . A twenty-four-hour
224 SAUL BELLOW
deli. A better shake for the handicapped , especially
those who use wheelchairs. But no one mentioned the
terror. About the terrible wildness and dread in this
huge place-nothing. About drugs, about guns . . . "
"Yes," Varennes said, "but that's hardly a serious
matter, the opinions of those people , what the interior
decorators are saying, what the feature editors print. "
"Quite right, but i t made m e think it was high time to
write a piece, since I grew up here. Several generations
of Cordes . . . "
Varennes then said that we had had a very thoughtful
exchange, he and I, and that was nice in its way (but
what of it? by implication). I had to agree . We sat there
explaining evils to each other, to pass them off some
how, redistribute the various monstrous elements, and
compose something the well-disposed liberal democrat
ic temperament could live with. Nobody actually said ,
"An evil has been done . " No, it was rather, "An
unfortunate crazed man destroyed a woman, true
enough , but it would be wrong of us to constitute
ourselves judges of this crime since its causes lie in
certain human and social failures." A fine , broad
minded conclusion, and does us credit. Although real
intelligence is too vigilant to accept this credit and
suggests to us all (since it is universal , the common
property of all human beings) that this is only a form,
and a far from distinguished form , of mutual aid.
Varennes went on, "I don't know what you'd get out
of talking with Spofford Mitchell. I'd have to take this
up with my team, and I'd have to ask Spofford , too. I
have to respect his rights . I guess you would find it
interesting to see where he is. The more serious
homicide cases are way down below. The officers don't
even open their doors at mealtimes down there. They
push their trays under the doors. Then the rats come
along and lick the icing off the bars . "
"Icing?"
Varennes said, "The kitchens bake cake . . . . "
The look we exchanged over the cake was singular.
But I broke it off, and backed down. I said, why
not-cake and icing, why not? And it was too bad
about the extra-security cells. I changed the subject. Of
course I didn't want to get in the way, infringe on
Mitchell's rights in any way or hamper his defense. He
said he aimed to save Spofford Mitchell from the chair.
I asked, was this a professional aim or a moral-legal
one-was he speaking as a lawyer who didn't like to
lose a case or did he have an obligation to save the
man's life. He was not glad to hear this question . He
was uptight as he said he saw no conflict, and what a
bad gang the prosecution was. They kept a tally on their
office wall. For a death sentence they chalked up a skull
and crossbones.
Then he turned about and took the initiative from
me. He became the questioner. He said I came down to
inspect the Public Defender's office and put him on the
defensive as a representative of the educated middle
class as if I thought he held a sinecure, and was
self-indulgent. At least this mass of trained muscle
could speak honestly. The base of his big throat became
charged with emotion. He wasn't angry yet , but a
certain amount of indignation was developing, and he
said that he didn't know yet where I stood , or from
what point of view I was asking him whether he was
being professional or moral .
Well , high feeling wa�r might be-a true sign of
earnestness. This was better than the first stage of
conversation , in which we stated views that might begin
to be serious-points for culture and serious concern
earned on both sides.
In this phase of the talk I was quite happy , in a
whirling disoriented way. I didn't expect him to let me
interview Spofford Mitchell (I was a dangerous per
son), but it was in its way a satisfactory afternoon.
I said, "You're feeling out my racial views. No
serious American can allow himself to be suspected of
prejudice . This forces us to set aside the immediate
data of experience . Because when we think concretely
226 SAUL BELLOW
or preverbally, we do see a black skin or a white one, a
broad nose or a thin one, just as we see a red apple on a
green tree. These are percepts. They should not be
under a taboo. "
"Well, are they?"
"Yes, we try to stretch the taboo back to cover even
these preverbal and concrete observations and simple
identifications. Yes , you and I have been playing bad
minton with this subject for quite a while, with a
shuttlecock flying back and forth over the taboo net."
Then he said, "Tell me, Dean, how do you see the
two people in this case?"
"I see more than a white mask facing a black one. I
see two pictures of the soul and spirit-if you will have
it straight. In our flesh and blood existence I think we
are pictures of something. So I see a picture, and a
picture. Race has no bearing on it. I see Spofford
Mitchell and Sally Sathers, two separatenesses, two
separate and ignorant intelligences. One is staring at
the other with terror, and the man is filled with a
staggering passion to break through, in the only way he
can conceive of breaking through-a sexual crash into
release."
"Release! I see. From fever and delirium. "
"From all the whirling. The horror is i n the
literalness--t he genital literalness of the delusion.
That's what gives the curse its finality. The literalness of
bodies and their membe rs-outsides without insides."
Sam Varennes seemed to give this some thought. He
must actually have been thinking how to get rid of me.
We're usually waiting for somebody to clear out and let
us go on with the business of life (to cultivate the little
obsessional garden) . But my case was more speciai-I
had just exposed myself as a nut, a crank in dean's
clothing. That was our conversation seen from his side.
Well, you never can tell what conclusions a man may
reach when you try especially hard to talk straight to
him. Neither party is good at it. No one is used to it.
And all individual or true thoughts are essentially
queer. But outsides without insides-what did that
mean! Metaphysics? Epistemology? What?
We were sitting in his office in the Criminal Courts
Building at Twenty-sixth and California. (Here Corde
would have added to the printed version in Harper's
that the sun was shining but even in broad daylight
there was a touch of the violet hour. Maybe the
architect had put a lavender tint into the glass to cut the
glare. Maybe the atmosphere did it, or a metabolic
derangement of the senses, a sudden increase of toxici
ty. ) There had been many changes at Twenty-sixth and
California since the old Bridewell days. New buildings
had risen, a modem wing at County Jail , the achieve
ment of Rufus Ridpath , for which his reward was
disgrace, character assassination . Buses rolled up all
day long. Prisoners brought from all the lockups in the
city were unloaded here. The men hopped out by twos,
handcuffed. As they went in pairs down the ramp to be
processed in the jail, most were downcast or in a silent
rage, but a few were having a hell of a time, reeling
with homecoming spirits, yelling to the guards, "Hey,
Mack! Look who's back!" They trooped in to be
psyched, social-worked, assigned to cells.
Around the courts and prison buildings, viewed from
the superb height of Varennes' office, lay huge rectan
gles, endless regions of the stunned city-many, many
square miles of civil Passchendaele or Somme. Only at
the center of the city, visible from all points over fields
of demolition, the tall glamour of the skyscrapers.
Around the towers, where the perpetual beacons min
gled their flashes with open day , there was a turbulence
of two kinds of light.
Varennes said, "When you talk about whirling you
make it sound like the maelstrom-like Edgar Allan
Poe."
"You mean apocalyptic. Once you start in with
apocalypse you lose your dependable , constructive
social frame of reference . "
Now, here Corde would have added, i n a n improved
244 SAUL BELLOW
pale, I look unwell, I look rotten, I'm skittish and

jumpy-I'm all over the place (quoting Shakespeare
"Yes. I seem to have a headache , something like

eyestrain . You wouldn't have a Tylenol in your purse? I
can swallow it without water. "
"No. A m I giving you a headache by putting pressure
on you?"
"The Provost tried to tell me not to mix into this ,
that it might do Beech harm to associate with me. I
shouldn't put Beech in the line of fire; he has troubles
enough. "
"Yes, the Provost had a chat with Beech. "
"And suggested that h e might come i n for some of
the heat I'm getting?"
"Well, are you really so hot as you think? It's just
some local unpleasantness. Beech could say his findings
affect all Homo sapiens, and the future of the entire
species."
"I see that. He talks continually about Homo sapiens
sapiens, and hominid evolution . "
"What impressed him, and it's the word h e used, is
that you aren't contentious. You didn't look for trou
ble, but you're capable of fighting. But the antagonism
of people in Chicago is insignificant. He has another
ball game in mind altogether." (Corde enjoyed hearing
slang from these foreign women.) "Besides, Beech and
the Provost have never gotten along. Look, if you go to
Washington and testify that the mining and smelting of
lead have to stop and that the food and canning
industries should be restrained and that the U.S. should
lead a world campaign and start immediately to clean
up the air and the waters, at a cost of billions .. ".
"It doesn't bring the college much financial support.

It gets the FDA into the picture . And Witt would like to
keep us apart-a wacko scientist and a cracked dean. "
"Why worry about Witt?"
"It isn't worry. The college has been decent to me.
Even Witt went out of his way."
"He put up the reward for information in the murder
case. So if he feels you'd be bad for Beech you don't
want to cross him. But this is merely administration
246 SAUL BELLOW
politics. You've got to look beyond that, much further.

Beech can't communicate . He says if he were to try to
do this himself he'd end up like Bucky Fuller, giving
incomprehensible lectures. I say nothing against Fuller
-he's wonderful. I only mean there's a special cult
public that loves high-minded kook specialists who
preach salvation through organic foods . . . how to
preserve the shrinking water reserves in a demographic
explosion. But try to understand what Beech is up
against. He has to start a world discussion at the highest
level. You have a gift for getting the attention of a
serious public. "
" I ' m good at sticking i t to them, a m I? That's
probably true, but true because I have my own ends. I
couldn't do it for other people . It wouldn't work. No
one would pay the slightest attention."
"I see that. I do. But if you understood his ends, they
might be yours, too. It wouldn't be a personal matter.
It's far from a personal matter with him. "
"Yes, h e made that clear to me. Liberal humanist
culture is weak because it lacks scientific knowledge .
He'd communicate some science to me and then we
could go forward. Minna also thinks it would upgrade
me to associate with a man of science. Better than
squalid Chicago, as a project . "
" I can't really see why you're so skeptical. You're
making me argue, fight. "
"I don't doubt the nobility o f Beech's intentions. "
"He's put together a masterpiece o f research. "
Corde said, "The sun is moving. I ' m beginning to
feel cold again. Let's walk a little."
"I have enough layers so that I don't feel the frost,"
said Vlada. "When I'm about to come back to the old
country I always begin to eat more. Last year all I could
find in the shops here was boxes of salt , jars of garlic
pickles, some sauerkraut. Now and then chickens tum
up. You stand in line for eggs. Meat is hard to get even
on the black market. Fish , never. Other Eastern bloc
countries have changed from the original Stalin agricul-
tural plan. This one, never. You can't even buy pota
toes. I always fly back slimmer."
They walked in the sun, on the crackling gravel path.
"You carry the weight with class," said Corde.
"Among my Serbian family in Chicago , the women
say, 'How do you expect to get a husband if you don't
reduce?' But I tell them, 'I may not get one even if I
stop eating, and then I'm a double loser. ' "
"According to your own theory, the more you eat,
the more you stupefy yourself with lead. "
She laughed and said, "It doesn't build up as fast as
that." Corde valued grace in fat women. Vlada walked
well, she knew how to place her foot.
"You can't get inured or mithridated?"
She shook her head. That wasn't possible. "Only
poisoned. The nervous system is permanently affected .
Kids become behavior problems, restless, frantic, and
intelligence is permanently impaired. "
"Therefore this world-and no matter what we're
like , it's a delicious world . . . "
"Yes, is the answer. "
"So the bottom line is that we eat and drink lead, we
breathe it. It accumulates in the seas, which are getting
heavier by the day, and it's absorbed by plants and
stockpiled in the calcium of the bones. Brains are being
mineralized. The great reptiles with their small brains
wore thick armor, but our big brains are being hard
ened from within?'�
He amused Vlada with this survey. More widely
smiling, lips large and long, and her white face vividly
warm, she said, "I love it when you get going, Albert."
"That's all right," he said. "I'm only thinking aloud.
I'm not talking myself into anything. " Then he came
near laughing, and when she asked him why, he said,
"Well , you see what it's like here . We were at the
crematorium just this morning and now we're discuss
ing whether I should join Beech in his campaign to
warn mankind against the greatest danger of all. At the
moment I feel myself crawling between heaven and
248 SAUL BELLOW
earth, and it is a little funny to be offered a big role: the

rescuer. Christ , not me! The heart damn near jumped
out of my chest when I had to �o below to identify
Valeria. I was dripping sweat and having fits and
convulsions in the guts. And now I'm strollin� in this
park with you, I'm a gentleman again, taking the grand
survey of man's future, the fate of the earth."
"I see that," said Vlada. "It's a bad day to try to get
your attention for a project of this kind . Seems unreal
and far away in these circumstances. "
"No, I admire Beech , and I ' d like to go into some of
this with him . He probably feels he can't wait, pressed
for time. Asked you to sound me out, get me started. "
"I never led him t o think that because we're friends,
and I've been close to Minna since the Harvard days,
that I had you in my pocket . "
"Of course you didn't. And I'm trying t o look as
closely as I can at the whole proposition. Sometimes
these 'hard' scientists are far out, like a separate
species. It makes them especially interesting to me . "
"You married one . "
" I married one. That's different. That's love . It
brings Minna back from outer space. Some I've met
never do get back. Some are subject to storms of clear
consciousness--my homemade term . Like turbulence ,
when the pilot asks you to fasten your seat belt. Then
there are the ones who have strong musical leanings or
are interested in poetry. Now that does appeal to me .
And as for those that are far, far out, absorbed in their
special complex games--I've often thought it possible
that one of them might turn out to be clairvoyant. Just a
little. But you have to be careful about this . "
"Let m e see i f I'm following," said Vlada.
"Look at it this way: Lead as a mineral may or may
not be the threat that Beech warns us against, but being
'leaden' certainly is a characteristic. Sometimes I
say 'earthen'-we often experience this earthenness.
Sometimes I say 'sclerotic,' or 'blind,' 'eyes that see
not, ears that hear not'-and this leads up to 'the
general end of everything' heralded by sclerotic , blind
and earthen. 'Lead' is more sinister, maybe because of
its color, hue or weight. Lead communicates something
special to us about matter, our existence in matter. At
Lakeview there was a kid who wrote poems, Joey
Hamil, and I remember one of his lines about 'Thy
leaden mace flung upon my weathered brow . ' He didn't
have a weathered brow. He was only sixteen years
old. "
"So you wonder whether 'lead' i s just what Professor
Beech has fixed upon but stands for something else that
we all sense. "
"That's possible, isn't it? The man i s in his superster
ile lab built for the analysis of moon rocks when it
strikes him from both sides that an imbalance in the
mineral realm itself threatens mankind , all of life and
the world itself. There's poetry in that, isn't there?
Man's great technical works, looming over him, have
coated him with deadly metal. We can't carry the
weight. The blood is sobbing in us. Our brains grow
feebler. This disaster also overtook the Roman Em
pire . It wasn't the barbarians, it wasn't the Christians, it
wasn't moral corruption: his theory is that the real
cause was the use of lead to prevent the souring of
wine. Lead was the true source of the madness of the
Caesars. Leaded wine brought the empire to ruin."
"Bones from Roman graves do show extreme con
centrations of the metal," said Vlada. "I've examined
those in my own lab."
"And that was only Rome. Now it's the whole world.
And it isn't the Grand Inquisitor's universal anthill that
we have to worry about after all, but something worse,
more Titanic-universal stupefaction, a Satumian,
wild, gloomy murderousness, the raging of irritated
nerves, and intelligence reduced by metal poison, so
that the main ideas of mankind die out, including of
course the idea of freedom . "
Corde breathed sharply, still ridding himself o f (im
aginary) smoke inhalation. He drew in the blue icicle-
250 SAUL BELLOW
making air of the small park with its fallen fence of iron
stakes--collapsed on weeds and bushes.
"I wonder if Beech thinks as romantically as that,"
said Vlada.
"It's you that work with him-but who knows," said
Corde . "And I'm sure I'm overdrawing it, but if there
are mysterious forces around , only exaggeration can
help us to see them. We all sense that there are powers
that make the world-we see that when we look at
it-and other powers that unmake it. And when people
shed incomprehensible tears they feel that they're
expressing this truth , somehow, one that may be other
wise inexpressible in our present condition. But it's a
rare sense , and people aren't used to it, and it can't get
them anywhere. Tears may be intellectual, but they can
never be political. They save no man from being shot,
no child from being thrown alive into the furnace. My
late father-in-law would weep when he lost a patient.
At the same time he belonged to the Communist
underground. The Doctor would weep. I wonder if the
Communist ever did . . . . "
"This is an interesting talk," said Vlada. "But I'll
have to ask you to set me straight . . . . "
"Why, of course ," said Corde. "I'm asking whether
certain impulses and feelings which play no part in the
scientific work of a man like Professor Beech and lie
ignored or undeveloped in his nature may not suddenly
have come to life . These res urrections can be grue
some. You can sometimes watch them-clumsy, absurd
heart stirrings after decades of atrophy. Sometimes it's
the most heartless people who are inspired after forty
years of reckoning and calculation and begin to accuse
everybody else of being heartless. But as I see Beech ,
he's innocent of that. The news, let's call it that,
reaches him in his lab as he puts the results of his
research in order. Like , 'This earth which I've been
studying for a lifetime is a being, too. It gave birth to us
all, but we are ungrateful, greedy and evil. . . . ."'
"And this is news to him-to continue your

argument-his feelings are untrained or undeveloped ,
and he gets carried away. I understand you better now.
Even if he cried , which is not his way . . ."
"It wouldn't be a good approach to politics. You can

see that I sympathize with him. And how I wish that
clear, exquisite brains like his could resolve all our
questions. They don't, though . It's endearing, howev
er, that he looks like a hayseed, an lchabod Crane, but
that he's a man of feeling and even a visionary. He
wants to protect and to bless. But then he begins to
talk-and what neo-Darwinian stuff he expounds: the
two-billion-year struggle by organisms in the bio
sphere. I'd rather eat a pound of dry starch with a
demitasse spoon than read this. Truth should have
some style . "
"That's where you might be of help. "
"What-if I tried t o speak for him?"
"It would depend on how it was done."
"It depends upon what he would expect. There
would be no difficulty in agreeing that inner city black
kids should be saved from poisoning by lead or heroin
or synthetic narcotics like the Tees and Blues. The
doubtful part of his proposition is that human wicked
ness is absolutely a public health problem, and nothing
but. No tragic density, no thickening of the substance
of the soul, only chemistry or physiology. I can't bring
myself to go with this medical point of view, whether it
applies to murderers or to geniuses. At one end of the
scale is Spofford Mitchell. Did he rape and murder a
woman because he put flakes of lead paint in his mouth
when he was an infant? At the other end, are Beetho
ven and Nietzsche great because they had syphilis? The
twentieth-century Faustus believed this so completely
that for the sake of his art he wouldn't have his lesions
treated, and the spirochete gave him his awful master
pieces as a reward . "
"You'd call that kind o f medical interpretation itself
'sclerosis,' or 'lead . ' " Vlada followed this.
"Where Beech sees poison lead I see poison thought
252 SAUL BELLOW
or poison theory. The view we hold of the material
world may put us into a case as heavy as lead, a
sarcophagus which nobody will even have the art to
paint becomingly. The end of philosophy and of art will
do to 'advanced' thought what flakes of lead paint or
leaded exhaust fumes do to infants. Which of these do
you think will bring us to the end of everything?"
"So that's how you understand this?"
" Real philosophy, not the groveling stuff the univer
sities mainly do. Otherwise: I remember how I used to
stare at Mendeleev's chart in the science class. There it
all was--Fe, Cu, Na, He. That's what we were made of.
I was so impressed! That's what everything was made
of. But Pb is licking all the others. Pb is the Stalin of the
elements, the boss . . . . Is it true that Beech has
measured the age of the planet accurately?"
"Most geophysicists think so. "
"I'm full o f admiration. That i n itself i s wonderful-!
listened over and over to the tapes he gave me. There
are parts I can recall almost verbatim. He never meant
to be a crusader. He was only investigating lead levels
and this led him into horror chambers. Then he saw
vast and terrible things all the way into the depths of
hell, and so forth, and the material foundations of life
on this earth being destroyed. And if pure scientists had
really understood science they would have realized the
morality and poetry implicit in its laws. They didn't. So
it's all going to run down the drain, like blood in a
Hitchcock movie. The Humanists also have flunked the
course. They have no strength because they're ignorant
of science. They're bound to be weak because they
have no conception of what the main effort of the
human mind has been for three centuries and what it
has found. So Beech is offering me a trade. I must go
back to the classroom and learn what it's all about
really. When I've understood the beauty and morality
contained in the laws of science , I can take part in the
decisive struggle-begin to restore the strength of
Humanism."
"I see that doesn't sit very well with you. "
"I gave u p writing for the papers ten years ago
because-well, because my modernity was all used up.
I became a college professor in order to cure my
ignorance . We made a trade . I teach young people to
write for the papers and in return I have an opportunity
to learn why my modernity was used up. At the college
I had time to read scads of books. In Paris I was too
busy doing art items and intellectual chitchat . I did
have some interesting assignments. For instance, I
wrote a few pieces on the poetess Tsvetayeva as she was
remembered by the Russian colony in Paris. How her
husband, whom she loved deeply, became a member of
the GPU and was forced to take part in killings. But
there I'm off the subject. I came back to Chicago to
continue my education. And then I had to write those
articles. There was no way to avoid it. The youngsters
would say it was my karma. Well, there's low-down
Chicago and there's high-up Chicago. There's Big Bill
Thompson , and then there's Aristotle, who has also
had a longtime association with the city, which amuses
a great many people . Aristotle , believe it or not, be
came a great influence in certain parts of Chicago .
Our great sister institution the University of Chicago
revived him. A. N. Whitehead, you know, believed
that Chicago had Athenian possibilities. Well, Big
Bill, that crook , was a PR pioneer. His slogan was
'Put down your hammer, get a hom-Boost, don't
knock! ' And then there was Aristotle : A man without
a city is either a beast or a god. Well , Chicago was
the city. Or was it? Where was it , what had become
of it? No cities? Then where was civilization? Or was
the U . S . A . as a whole now my city? In that case I
could move away from this chaos and live with Minna
in a quiet place, and we could earn our bread some
where in the woods , on a computer. The communi
cations revolution could byp1lSS Chicago or Detroit.
Cities could be written off-dying generations, the
blacks and Puerto Ricans, the aged too poor to move.
254 SAUL BELLOW
. . . Let them be ruined , decay, die and eliminate

themselves. There are some who seem willing that
this should happen. I'm not one of them. Not me."
Corde looked at his watch. It was half past one.
"Yes, you have an appointment at two o'clock," said
Vlada . "We'd better start back. I'll try to explain to
Beech why you haven't yet made up your mind. But
now there's something else. I have another message
from Chicago for you; this one is from your sister. "
"Oh, you talked with Elfrida. How nice of you,
Vlada, to call her."
"She called me. She sent a message. I suppose it's a
message . "
"What was i t that Elfrida wanted you to tell me?"
"She was worried how you would take it, although I
said I couldn't see why you would object . . . . She's
gotten married . "
"What-Elfrida married ! " The unexpected news
gave Corde a sharp pang. He gave no outward sign of
this. He looked away and drew in his lips, thinking,
Why should she do that! Well, that's Elfrida. He said,
"I see. She married Sorokin?"
"Yes, the Judge . Are you surprised?"
He had stopped ; his hands were deep in his pockets
and his shoulders raised high . He looked sallow.
"You don't like that?"
"She didn't discuss it with me," he said. "But then
why should she? She's a mature lady. Am I surprised?
Only a little-Sorokin isn't so bad. He's good-natured,
virile , he's a lively extrovert. I suppose she did the best
she could. What I feel is more like sympathy for her.
But among the Chicago types she had to choose from,
she might have done worse . "
"Isn't she a Chicago type herself?"
- "He's a few years younger than Elfrida."
"Yes, she mentioned that . "
"Well , there i t i s . Are they off on their honeymoon?
They can't go, I suppose. Not while Mason is still in
trouble."
"Mason is very angry with his mother. "
"Is he? If he hadn't shaken her up so much she might
not have jumped into this. Going it alone was too hard
for her. Well, Elfrida . . . she remarried. I dearly love
my sister. "
"She said that. But she was worried you wouldn't
approve."
"Maybe I was standoffish with Sorokin. I doubt that
he took much notice. Anyway , I meant no real harm.
But why is Mason so miffed? . . . A silly question,
come to think of it. Mason came to her one day with a
paperback from the drugstore and said she had to read
it. It was a how-to book-how the middle-aged woman
could manage by herself and be a well-adjusted widow.
He put her on notice, she was supposed to keep a
bolding pattern . He brought her this manual as a
Mother's Day present. "
"At least she didn't take that from him."
"No. I think that clinched it. When I saw her
studying this paperback on how to be happy while sad,
I was sure she'd marry. And it's foolish to ask why she
didn't discuss this match with me. My views are as
obvious as Mason's."
"It seemed to me she did the smart thing."
"Well, of course. It was better not to let me put my
prejudices on record. Then I'd have to stand by them,
she'd feel hurt, et cetera, and she's too intelligent for
that."
"So she is-attractive, also ," said Vlada. "Well,
there's nothing wrong with a husband like the Judge .
You said- it yourself. I wish I could find one of those.
He's good-looking and amusing. He has a plan to ride a
raft down a South American river."
"He told me about it. At the time, he planned to do
it alone. I can't picture Elfrida rushing through the
jungles downstream like the African Queen, hanging on
to her Samsonite luggage . She's a little old for it. But
then there's nobody too old to be young. That's the
present outlook. Actually age has been on her mind,
256 SAUL B ELLOW
naturally it has, but the book Mason ordered her to
read-she was supposed to go it alone like a brave
modem mother-put her in a furious depression . She
saw the handwriting on the nursing home wall. "
"Say that she married in self-defense. She's not a
young girl like Lydia Lester."
"No, I still think she might have talked it over with
her only brother. But she and I never could find the
common premise . And maybe she thought the Judge
would make Mason a good role model-an extrovert
who drops from helicopters. Not like an uncle who goes
fishing for porgies and falls in the drink . She suspected
me of being unsympathetic, of being put off by the
boy's resemblance to his father. But I didn't dislike
Mason senior. He was the special kind of highly
intelligent top-grade barbarian I grew up with-people
like my own father and my uncles. People to whom I
was affectionately attached. Elfrida's opinion is that
young Mason isn't as bad as other sons in her set. He
thinks he's one of the black street people , but at least
he doesn't bum out his veins with synthetic heroin, the
stuff that has to be shot when it's scalding . The addicts
become paralyzed. Mason will never really hurt him
self. He's not a hijacker, kidnapper, terrorist. He's no
Feltrinelli. " Here , Corde paused. Then he said, "You
can't even talk about your poor sister without getting
into broad social questions. That's the worst of it. Now
I suppose she'll sell the house on the Cape and invest it
in parachutes."
The apartment was filled with callers. Some of them
came with a second purpose: They wanted to get their
children out of the country. You couldn't blame them
for that. But how did one find sponsors , and where
could you get dollars? You had to have the dollars.
Corde observed some of this. "Your mother was very
fond of my daughter. She's an excellent student. She
wants to do molecular biology . . . " then pulling a chair
closer, urgently whispering, glancing significantly at the
Dean. Minna listened in her solemn way. You never
knew what she was hearing or whether her large eyes
'
looked at you or through or past you. No, but she saw
everything, felt it intensely, took it all to heart. Parents
handed her term papers, manuscripts. She accepted
them. Nobody was refused. She said she would ask the
Dean to read some of them.
Corde said, "Spangler is expecting me."
"Yes, you should go out," she said. "When is the car
coming? Yes , it'll be good for you to have a talk with
your old pal. But don't stand waiting in the street.
Promise you'll stay in the lobby. Please . . . . "
He took the packet from Alec Witt down with him ,
and had just time enough to see that it was stuffed with
letters on his articles, mostly objecting, probably,
alumni demanding that he be canned. Corde thought, I
could do without crazy mail. Say what you liked about
Miss Porson, she might be gross but her feminine
instinct was to spare the Dean. You couldn't expect
such delicacy from the Provost. But then (self-critical)
257
258 SAUL BELLOW
why look to anyone to spare you? You didn't need to be
spared at all, unless you believed that you had a very
special and high calling and that right-minded ladies
and gentlemen should temper the wind to you (a
vocation left you shorn?). Some of the letters were
addressed to him personally but Miss Porson had
considered it necessary for the administration to see
them. She bad her own picture of the administration, a
vision of the college hierarchy and of who owed what to
whom. If you were Dean you reported to the Provost,
who reported to the President, who went to the
Board . . . .
Cremation or no cremation, a glistening day un
folded--business as usual for the weather. Corde,
still bothered by smoke in his lungs, cleared his throat
as he hurried into Spangler's limousine. Then the posh
Intercontinental cafe and the big fragrance of the
espresso machines. This time Dewey had taken a table
by the window, warmed by the sun, an antidote to the
horrible gloom of the crematorium. He was suavely
solicitous-oh , what a smoothie Dewey had become in
the great world! In the indoor sunlight he looked more
corpulent-terraces of fat under his shirt, descending
over the upswelling belly. He was belted beneath the
sunny equator. There was only Corde to remember his
skinny adolescence.
"Poor Albert. I'll order you a double Scotch. You
were looking green in the mortuary. "
" I bad to go below and sign papers. "
"Odd to see you i n a foreign situation, so different
from any other setting in the past."
"When you turned up, I bad the opposite sensation.
Familiarity. Do you remember after my mother's
funeral--w e were still at Lakeview-you came to the
house?"
"No, my memory is dusty on this." (The little
bastard. He was lying. But let him.)
"The living room was full of callers. You sat in a
comer, behind everyone, and made faces at me. "
Spangler was not pleased by this. "I don't remember
that. "
"Yes," said Corde. "You came to remind m e of my
duty as a nihilist not to give in to the middle-class hy
pocrisy of mourning, and the whole bourgeois sham . "
"It sounds as though you hadn't forgiven m e yet."
"I was angry with you, yes. "
"I was a n unpleasant kid , I admit. I n those days I was
the more eccentric one. Seriously, you couldn't hold it
against me. This was back in the late thirties."
Skinny, wretched, weak, crowing, angry, Dewey in
those days was eager to deal blows left and right. No, of
course you couldn't hold it against him. "It's just a
recollection-your grimacing and being so kinky when
I was grieving so hard , just back from the cemetery. It
was one of those winter days of cast-iron gloom,
nothing but gray ice."
"It was Chicago winter, all right. But while you're
remembering you might also remember that you were
going off to Dartmouth that year. My family didn't
have the money to send me even to the city college.
And your father was sitting there, and he didn't like
me. "
"I don't think it w as dislike. You puzzled my old
man. When he found you in a dark corridor of the
apartment on all fours, growling and being the wild
beast, one of your special behaviors, he was mystified."
"Sure. But your people had money and connections.
You got to Potsdam because of your father's pull. You
wouldn't have been there if your dad hadn't been a
crony of Harry Vaughan, who was one of Truman's
guys. Same Harry Vaughan who accepted seven deep
freezers from lobbyists and a medal from Juan Per6n."
"Well," said Corde, "all the better that you did it all
on your own, without any Vaughans." He knew very
well that Dewey had been a talented and tireless career
politician. But how Dewey had made it to the top
mattered little now. "And you were more eccentric
than me. "
260 SAUL BELLOW
" Then I was ," Spangler said. "Okay, it wasn't your
fault that your father was a fat cat hotel operator who
drove a Packard and belonged to the country club. One
thing I remember was that you took me to the family
dentist and had him check my teeth and put it on -your
bill. The dentist was disgusted by all the tartar or
plaque in my mouth-1 never would brush. In spite of
which there wasn't a single cavity. I was very proud ."
Yes , a horribly vain and greedy child, Dewey. When
he had two bits (on that day Corde was broke) he once
ordered a sandwich for himself at the Woolworth
counter on Washington Street-roast beef, a scoop of
mashed potatoes, peas , a glazed flood of flour gravy or
white sauce filling up the plate. Corde watched while
Dewey ate it all by himself. He handled the knife and
fork with jittering elegance and high breeding-a
Chaplin couldn't have duplicated it. His wolfing sharp
teeth and famished throat together with the hoity-toity,
high-elbowed wielding of the dime store flatware. His
ears were tucked under his cap. He offered his pal
nothing. It may have been at that time that he shaved
back his hairline to increase his resemblance to William
Powell . Then the bristles came in, hence the cap. So it
was extraordinary how he had civilized himself, some
how. Now he was a substantial public man, what cops
in Chicago call "a notable , " the companion of states
men. He had made himself. And now this interesting
reflection: Corde , too, had made himself. But then,
deliberately, he had unmade himself. Spangler reck
oned that he had done this, that he had stopped writing
for the papers, because he conceded Spangler's superi
ority and withdrew from competition. But this was not
how Corde had unmade himself. He had a very differ
ent idea about the unmaking. And Spangler despite his
theories and for G† his world eminence was not entirely
sure of himself with his old friend. Sitting with Corde,
he felt himself still the squawking green kid, pushing
too hard. Big-time deportment had not subdued the
struggling punk.
"Yesterday I was received by Mr. and Mrs. Presi

dent ," said Dewey.
"What are they like?"
"He has a fine head of hair, but he looks like a
Keystone Kop. "
"Was anything said about m y mother-in-law?"
"I said I had an old Chicago friend here, the husband
of . . . the son-in-law of . . . Say, you are obsessed by
those women. You love 'em. Mr. President made no
comment."
"Still, with so much on your mind . . . Are you
writing about the Warsaw Pact? And you remembered
to mention it. "
"Too late to help," said Spangler. He was modest
when thanked, but he'd feel slighted, even outraged, if
you failed to acknowledge his influence. Corde there
fore acknowledged it. It wasn't flattery; more like
charity. From Corde , Spangler needed the right signs.
Corde's guess was that he had been a major theme in
Spangler's lengthy analysis, the subject of countless
groping hours on the couch. Their relationship , accept
ed at last, must have become an element of Spangler's
maturity, his proof, bought with time and suffering
effort, that he was indeed mature . In these meetings at
the Intercontinental , Spangler was able to test the
results of years of psychoanalytic therapy. He was all
set now and the cure was firm. Still there was a certain
uneasiness between them. Problems, once you con
ceive of them as problems, never let you alone , thought
Corde. All occasions inform against you if you're
problem-haunted. He was sorry for Dewey. Dewey still
suspects that I know something he doesn't know, have
something he just has to have.
His influence acknowledged , Dewey (turnabout)
praised Minna. "Just as people said, Albert, your wife
is a beauty. I also had a glimpse of the old lady in the
coffin. She had quite a face-quite a face!"
Corde refrained from answering. He waited to see
what subject Spangler proposed to discuss. Women,
262 SAUL BELLOW
love , marriage? No , he'd want to talk about Chicago.
Corde himself wanted that.
Dewey said, "That trial will be going to the jury in a
few days. Did I hear that your cousin wanted to serve
you with a subpoena?"
"That's correct . "
"It would have been quite a trick-have a server
grab you in the crematorium this morning . "
"Maxie still amuses you . "
"Not s o much i n person . I looked him u p in Chicago
a couple of weeks ago . "
"What were you doing there?"
"Seeing my old dad, who's ninety-one years old. Max
met me for a drink at the Drake. The cocktail waitress
identified him . 'Aren't you the lawyer on that case? I
seen you on TV . ' Maxie preened. You made him a
celebrity . He was just about to ask the girl what she was
doing after work. He still has his lascivious hang-up. I
remember his idea for sexual comfort stations-like
public toilets. Drop four quarters in the slot and enter a
private cubical. If you and your girl friend happen to be
walking together and feel hot suddenly, you can get
relief at the next corner. "
Corde was not to be induced to talk about his
cousin's peculiarities. Intermittently he still saw the
panel truck hearse , and Ioanna on her knees by the
coffin putting Valeria's hand to her cheek; and himself
frowning with horror and scrawling his name on the
register, freezing, sweating, frantic to escape ; and on
the stairs the extremes of heat and cold like two faces of
an ax, splitting him in halves. He took a large swallvw
of whiskey . Spangler said, "This erotic stuff doesn't
amuse you . . . . You don't believe your cousin can win
the case?"
"Anything can happen in a Chicago court. "
"You're very hard o n the old toddling town. Are
things so different elsewhere?"
"I suppose not. Among other discoveries, I found
that Chicago wasn't Chicago anymore . Hundreds of
thousands of people lived there who had no conception

of a place. People used to be able to say . . . "
"Ah, yes," said Spangler. "I'm with you there. It's
no longer a location, it's only a condition. South Bronx,
Cleveland, Detroit, Saint Louis, from Newark to Watts
-all the same noplace . "
"Why do people decide t o live here rather than
there?" said Corde .
"Where's their inner reason? you're asking. But
that's the modern condition," said Spangler. "That's all
old hat. But I have to tell you, Albert. I read those
pieces of yours with intense concentration, fascination.
They may not have opened my eyes to Chicago, but I
learned a lot about you. The old friend revealed. You
wrote damn queer things I'm dying to ask you about."
"For example."
"You won't believe it, but I actually made notes. It
was on the Concorde and I had a few hours. You said
the setting was like the Gobi Desert." Spangler brought
out his pocket notebook. "You said that Chicago was
part of the habitable globe, of course, the laws of
physics apply here as elsewhere, blood circulates in the
veins, tbe same sky is above, but if you grew up in this
place there were moments when you felt that it didn't
meet nature's full earthly standard. And so on. A
curious lack of final coherence , an environment not
chosen to suit human needs . . . favorable to manufac
ture, shipping, construction. Now, I'm not going to
argue with you about its charm, but you looked at
everything as if the ophthalmologist had put drops in
your eyes. I'm frankly surprised that the Harper's
people let you go on as you did. The language you used
from time to time . . . "
"Give me some instances."
"Oh, for example, 'the harsh things of the soul.' How
one lives with them. Or, 'Politically is there any salva
tion for this order?' Many statements of this kind.
That's why I said last time how lucky it would be for
you if your readers would get impatient and drop the
264 SAUL BELLOW
magazine . But for me it's full of curiosities. I have my
own favorite passages. One of them is the long para
graph about the tunnel and reservoir project. I wish I
had copied it out-a mammoth sewer project costing
more than the Alaska pipeline, capacity forty billion
gallons, as wide as three locomotives side by side,
running for more than a hundred miles deep under the
city, maybe weakening the foundations of the skyscrap
ers. And all those tons of excrement, stunning to the
imagination. It won't be the face of Helen that topples
those great towers, it'll be you-know-what, and that's
the difference between Chicago and Ilium. Now tell
me , whom were you writing for? You pushed the
poetry too bard . "
Corde said, " I don't think I forced poetry o n Chica
go. Maybe it was Chicago that forced the poetry on me.
But then there were also quiet, relaxed passages
descriptions of residential streets. I did quite a lot with
domestic architecture . "
"Yes, the interiors of the six-flats ; that was quite
good , quite good . Neighborhood life in the thirties,
also. And the lakefront, and the Loop as it was before
the war. You had good touches on the parks. I liked the
bits about the parks. It's okay to be sentimental. Yes ,
the good old days when Chicago was a city o f immi
grants who had found work, food and freedom and
a kind of friendly ugliness around them, and they
practiced their Old World trades-cabinetmakers,
tinsmiths, locksmiths , wurst-stuffers from Cracow,
confectioners from Sparta. Those passages had lots of
charm . " Spangler here was noticeably condescending.
He himself faced the big public questions--the Persian
Gulf, Russian aims in East Africa, West European
neutralism and NATO, the resumption of SALT talks.
Such things were truly serious, questions with large ,
permanent implications. It was after all Dewey the
plucked-chicken adolescent , the shrieker, the liar, the
problem child, who had attained world distinction.
What his blue eyes scanning Corde back and forth were
saying was that the old Chicago was far away-Lincoln
Park was far away and long ago, the thrills of Shake
speare and Plato, the recitations from "The Garden of
Proserpine" and "Lapis Lazuli" and "The Waste
Land," the disputes about The Will to Power, and what
nihilism really meant, all of that, old pal, was boyhood,
and one must detach oneself. (Corde hadn't detached
himself.) Corde , still filled with feelings about Valeria,
Minna, Elfrida (married! ) , was pleased to be here in
the sunshine, however sad. Spangler was pleasant,
mostly, garnished with so much beard and his hair in
grizzled ginger waves. Why had he ever wanted to look
like William Powell?
"One of your better ideas was to hunt up some of the
Lakeview classmates. That part was all right. The guy
from the central post office , the CPA, the probate court
judge-! could take them or leave them. But you got
lucky with guys like Billy Edrix, the Air Force Colonel
whose wife tried to murder him. I didn't remember
him."
"I happened to. From the track team. "
"That was curious ," said Spangler. "Even though
she was convicted on the evidence of the two hit men
she hired. And she tried to poison him, too, and once
tried to beat his brains out with the telephone as he
slept. With all this proven he still had to go on
supporting her by court order and let her occupy the
house while the conviction was on appeal What's with
the judges?"
"Yes, and all the while Billy was still Hying Air Force
cargo planes between Germany and O'Hare . "
When Corde went out to the far suburbs t o talk to
him, Billy said he only faintly recalled him. "Track, you
say? Hell, I couldn't run across the lawn now . "
Billy had built himself a new house, just finished , and
they were standing in a raw hole in the ground ("This is
gonna be landscaped") drinking beer out of cans.
266 SAUL BELLOW
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268 SAUL BELLOW
Harold let Albert have it, but she must have been
wounded . Corde remembered how heart-struck he
was, and that he had carried his sore injured heart to
Lincoln Park. That was always one of the peculiarities
of Chicago: Where could you take your most passion
ate feelings? Carry them into what setting? It was
exactly this time of year, Christmas week, getting on for
January. The wind came down unchecked from the
Arctic-white snow, black chain fences, trees bare, sky
blue. Four decades and two continents didn't make
much difference, for the present day was much like the
other one-freezing blue, the sunlight, the women
dying or dead.
Was it possible that Spangler was looking at him with
large amusement? Fat face, plump hands, blue eyes,
warm lids, brown, swelling and lacy-the sunlight
revealed all their intricate puffiness and dark stain.
Spangler tucked his laughter under his armpits, where
his fingers were inserted, and crossed his smallish feet .
O f course (Corde the persistent, almost fixated observ
er) Spangler now had a drum belly. His sharp teeth
were clean , he had accepted the necessity to brush.
Psychoanalysis and prestige had sobered him, cleaned
him up, he no longer had the screaming-meemies. It
was funny how fortunate a man could become , Ameri
can style . Nietzsche had said that it was better to be a
monstre gai than an ennuyeux sentimental. When
Dewey told Miss Starr in the tenth grade that he was an
orphan adopted by the cannibals who had eaten his
parents and told of his escape on a raft from an African
island , he was a monstre gai. Now, with Brezhnev and
Kissinger and Indira Gandhi, he had still more thrilling
real-life adventures. He had every reason to be
pleased, therefore. But there was something that he
wanted still from Corde. Could it be a heart-to-heart
talk? No, not that. Could it be an edifying relationship?
Maybe that was closer to the mark.
Spangler said, "You wrote mean things to me about
my old lady."
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270 SAUL BELLOW
two are blending now. The big public is picking up the
jargon to add to its fantasies. . . . "
"You're going too fast for me ," said Spangler. "So

you decided to let everybody have it, and force every
body to undergo the facts in some form . " -
"To recover the world that is buried under the debris
of false description or nonexperience . "
"It wasn't the material i n your pieces that gave me
trouble," said Spangler. "Some of that was damned
interesting. It was the way you put the facts that was
hard to take. Maybe it was your attitude that was
intolerable. A modest journalist would have said that
he was working up some stuff about Chicago. In the old
days he would have said the city was his beat. But
you're saying, 'I was assigned to it, ' which makes it like
a visionary project, or the voice of God saying, 'Write
this up, as follows. ' Now, believe it or not, you didn't
sound much different forty years ago. When I read
Harper's I was hearing echoes from our youth. ''
Echoes of youth implied that little or no progress had
been made. But Corde was not bothered by this.
Spangler, the world-communicator, was a maker of
discourse (increasing the debris of false description).
Twice weekly, readers all over the U . S . picked up their
fresh thick newspapers and turned to Spangler's col
umn to tune up their thinking on world affairs, to
correct their pitch. Dewey was quoted often by Le
Monde and The Economist, so why should he be
bothered by the opinions of his adolescent sidekick? He
had every reason to be confident, relaxing in the
plate-glass warmth of the Intercontinental. In the cafe
you saw about you East German trade representatives,
members of Chinese missions , costumed, turbaned
Nigerian ladies-and as a final bonus two old buddies
from Chicago, one of them a figure of international
stature. And Corde wondered whether he wasn't being
interviewed by Dewey. Interviews were Dewey's great
strength. Pressing for true answers, he fixed you with a
hard eye, he was in control. "How seriously should I
The Dean's D�cemba 271
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272 SAUL BELLOW
curiously absorbed in Dewey: blue eyes, puffy lids,
tortoise-shell beard , arms crossed over his fat chest,
fingers tucked into armpits, his skin scraped and mot
tled where the beard was trimmed, the warm air of his
breathing, his personal odors , a sort of doughnut
fragrance , slightly stale-the whole human Spangler
was delivered to Corde in the glass-warmed winter light
with clairvoyant effect. He saw now that Spangler was
downslanted in spirit. The slight wave of his hair, which
had always had an upward tendency, apparently had
reversed itself. And he used dye , that was perfectly
plain. But this was a mere observation and no judg
ment. Let him touch up his hair. Seeing him so actual,
vanities were dissipated, you were in no position to
judge, and there was no need for judging. Spangler's
rays were turned downwards, and his look openly
confessed it. He had been a kook, but certainly no
coward. Maybe on this death day Corde was receiving
secret guidance in seeing life. Perhaps at this very
moment the flames were finishing Valeria, and there
fore it was especially important to think what a human
being really was. What wise contemporaries had to say
about this amounted to very little.
"Where would you like to begin?"
"We already have begun," said Spangler, softening
his tone . All he wanted , probably, was to feel secure in
ordinary human dealings. With an old pal, this should
be possible. As a distinguished person, he couldn't
afford to take chances, come off looking foolish. "Let's
look at the curve of your career, for a minute. You
started with a bang, describing Stalin, Churchill , Tru
man, Attlee. You actually saw those guys ! But then you
settled down on the Herald Tribune doing lighter
cultural features, very good, no special world perspec
tive. All of a sudden, in your mid-forties, you head
back to Chicago and turn into a professor. Well, of
course America is where the real action is. This is
terrible news to have to tell humankind , but what else is
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274 SAUL BELWW
would say a professor with tenure is like a woman on
welfare with ten illegitimate kids. They're both set for
life , never again have to work." Corde immediately
began to regret saying this. It was mischievous. And he
had forgotten that they were no longer boys in Lincoln
Park. There was a gap in judgment here . They were
men now-journalists, at that, quick to see an opening.
But Dewey, laughing hard (turned on , ignited) , was
showing his sharp teeth and putting the heels of his
hands to his sides just as he used to do forty years
before.
"That's great, Albert, just great. Was Elfrida's hus-
band such a wit? I didn't realize it. "
"Her late husband. "
" I heard you the first time. He passed away?"
"Three, four years ago. My sister has just remar-
ried."
"Pretty woman, Elfrida. I made a pass at her once. I
suppose she told you."
"Yes."
"But you never mentioned it-that's because you
were brought up an American gentleman. If I had had
that kind of information on you, I would have baited
you. You used to say that your people were Pullman car
Americans. Not quite accurate. They didn't take an
upper berth; they traveled in a drawing room. And
wasn't your mother's father governor of the Virgin
Islands, or was it the Philippines? You see, you had
better breeding than me. So when I propositioned your
pretty sister she laughed at me. I was a preposterous
kid. But I told her preposterous kids were the most
uninhibited sex partners. Still, I couldn't get her serious
attention. You might not have liked it if she had taken
up with me-it would have been quite a test of your
breeding to be an uncle to a child of mine. But she
snubbed me. Serves her right that her boy is such a
twerp and nuisance-what's eating him, anyway?"
Corde lifted his shoulders. "Search me."
"Oh, come on, Albert . . . . It isn't like you not to

take a view. Don't deprive an old friend of your
interpretation . "
" I was saying just a while ago that you couldn't even
mention your only sister without broaching all the big
social questions. "
"Whom did Elfrida marry this time?''
"A judge."
"That'll go down big with her radical son. But since
he gives his mother so many legal headaches . . . "
" . . . She made e.n aspirin marriage. "
Spangler warmly blinked at him, approving. "Do you
say things like that among academic friends? . . . I
didn't criticize you for becoming a prof, Albert. I've
pushed you about it mainly from curiosity. I myself
have thought it would be nice to retire to an academic
setting eventually. I never got to go to college. But it
shouldn't be too hard, with my record in public life, to
become a fellow somewhere. "
"You ought to be able to name your own spot,
Dewey, like Hubert Humphrey or Dean Rusk."
Spangler received this with a flush of self
congratulation, but he also inclined his head in thanks.
Corde thought, I'm not full of rancor and envy, and it
pleases him. My mental attitudes, he says, haven't
changed in four decades, but then neither have the
personal ones, and it may be a pleasant surprise. He
may inspire satirical thoughts, but I don't feel like
sniping. I have no impulse to pick on him. If he's a fat
little obnoxious bastard, which is what I think he thinks
he is, it doesn't matter, because I evidently love him as
I used to do. I can't take it back. I must be immature
that way. Affections like this probably seem grotesque
to a wordly and psychoanalyzed old party like Dewey.
"I may ask you for advice on universities one of these
days, although to judge by your attitudes you may not
be the party to tum to. "
"When I went off t o Dartmouth after m y mother
276 SAUL BELLOW
died-and I was mourning more than I realized-I had
wonderful teachers whom I never forgot, and I read
Plato with them, and the poets . "
"Yeah, yeah-Chapman's Homer, realms o f gold.
And that's what you wanted to come back to, more of
the same-<:ulture and civilization, the stronghold of
humanism. Stupid to expect it. Nevertheless, such a
setting would be nice for the declining years, if I have
any."
"Why, aren't you well? You look okay."
"I seem more or less normal , I suppose. I guess I can
tell you this, although it would hurt me if it got around.
But you have too many headaches of your own to start
gossiping about me. I went to Chicago to have surgery.
Diverticulitis."
"Is that serious? Isn't it what Eisenhower had?"
"It's serious enough for me to be wearing the bag.
Do you want to see it?"
"Not particularly. "
Dewey showed i t to him anyway, impulsively pulling
out his shirt. Yes, there was the square plastic enve
lope. Something dark and warm was inside. Corde's
teeth were on edge .
"I'll be back in surgery by and by. They'll try to hook
me up again. There's more to see. I have a ftap of flesh
here."
"I'll take your word for it. What is there to hook
up?"
"Two ends of the intestine. The doctors can't prom
ise success. "
S o this was why Spangler had gone out o f his way,
had sent his car twice, had made time for Corde in a
busy schedule, had come to the crematorium. He's not
a man for funerals. He was wrecked , sick, his insides
were uncoupled. He stared at Corde. His acquired
controls were turned off and the double ducking man
nerism returned , as if he could not bring his chin to
rest. His expression was angry. But he pushed his
shirttail back matter-of-factly.
"They'll sew you together. You'll forget all about it

by summer. " I'll take you back to Woolworth's lunch
counter and buy you a roast-beef-and-white-gravy
sandwich.
"Don't talk like a jerk. You're a horse's ass, Albert."
The creature of flesh and blood going through the
mill-only one possible outcome. That was Spangler's
message. What are you trying to give me! He was
flushed, the heat rushing into his blue eyes. His look
was fiercely sarcastic. Well , they were on a human
footing, at least. Spangler said, "In this condition, what
woman will sleep with me?"
"That's a thought. But if it's that important . . . "
"If it's that important, I can get lists of ladies with the
same trouble . Or else there are kinky broads enough.
Masses of female masochists." He was softening. "Or
maybe you think elder-statesmanship has calmed me
down and I can't be the horny little bastard I was. You
wouldn't be completely wrong. I've had my innings.
Well, the bag is depressing, it throws a shadow on my
self-image. Otherwise I'm in good health enough.
Remember, I never had cavities in my teeth, nor any
other complaints until this one, if you don't count
complaints of the psyche or character. I can tell how
you thought of me , how you formulated me, Albert-a
near psychopath who was saved by becoming a shaper
of public opinion. Sometimes, when driving up to the
White House to be received by Bugs Bunny himself, I
would get weird, deep tingles in the nervous system. I
would think of you and some laconic wisecrack you
might make in your basso profunda. But with all this
your feeling is that I'm not so bad for a comic monster,
sort of sweet, in fact. But now, to use a gangland
expression, death has me fingered. "
Corde said, "That's not such a bad resume. " What
he felt was a compression inside, a stirring in certain of
his organs; sadness, then faintness, something like
"fatedness" and lastly immense pity. This flow of
feeling occurred quite slowly. It took its time. It
•
278 SAUL BELLOW

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280 SAUL BELLOW
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"I hope Gigi doesn't get too serious about the relics
she's collected. "
"My mother hid them away, and I don't want those
bastards to take them. "
"We may have to pay to get them out . "
"The appraisal will b e unreal. And with what
money?"
"I'll come up with the money. What I really wanted
to talk about was going horne . "
"I can't, right away. "
"We'd better, for all kinds of reasons. There isn't
much of December left . The new term starts soon.
Besides, there's the time at Mount Palomar they're
going to reserve for you . "
Corde knew what h e was doing. Professionally
Minna was superconscientious. Nothing was allowed to
interfere with duties. Mostly it amused him that this
beautiful and elegant woman should behave like a
schoolgirl, with satchel and pencil box. When she was
getting ready to set out for the day, he sometimes joked
with her. "Got your compass and protractor? Your
apple for teacher?" Together with her big fragrant
purse, a bag of scientific books and papers was slung
over her shoulder-ten times more stuff than she
needed. But occasionally the gold-star-pupil bit did get
him down, and she was cross with him, interpreting his
irritation as disrespect for her profession. It had noth
ing to do with that. She put in a ten-hour day, never
missed a visiting lecturer, a departmental seminar. Her
tutorials, rehearsed far into the night, must have been
like concerts. What he minded was her fanatical ab
sorption. He often had dinner waiting for her, and
towards seven o'clock began to listen for the sound of
the key in the lock. A lady wrapped up in astronomy
going about Chicago after dark? She gave him (it was
absurd!) wifely anxieties. But now (manipulative, but it
was justifiable) he was using the astronomy to get her
·
back to Chicago.
"Of course we've got to leave," she said. "But I have
282 SAUL BELLOW •
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284 SAUL BELLOW •
terrible things about her. I'm horribly angry . Can you

tell me . . . ?"
What an innocent person! She did stars; human
matters were her husband's field. Some division of
labor! And swamped with death he was supposed to
bail out with a kitchen cup of psychology. His round
face crowned with felt hat looked down into her face,
which was not only as white as meringue but as finely
lined (December daylight was unsparing). What was
the case? Her loved and admired mother (how could
you not admire an omnipotent Roman matron) had
assigned her daughter, for safety, to the physical
universe-not exactly the mysterium tremendum; that
was religion . But science! Science would save her from
evil. The old woman protected Minna from the police
state. She endured ostracism , she fought the officials,
and she finally got her daughter out of the country. But
this powerful protection was gone. And now Valeria's
disappearance had to be accounted for. Where was the
strength on which Minna had always depended? In
short , mortal weakness, perplexity, grief-the whole
human claim. Minna hadn't made the moves frequently
made by scientists to disown this claim: "Don't bother
me with this ephemeral stuff-wives, kids, diapers,
death. " She was too innocent for that. So she turned to
her husband for help. She loved him . And as soon as
she asked for help the strength drained out of him. But
he had only himself to blame for that, because he had
taken human matters for his province. Neither more
nor less. He was justified to Minna the scientist as
Albert the human husband. He said , "I may not be
able to tell you much. "
"But you think about these things all the time. I
watch you doing it. "
"Then let's see . . . Why do you suppose you feel so
angry?"
"On the plane I was frightened that we mightn't get
here in time . But the truth is that I didn't actually
believe she was going to die . "
"I follow that. You thought Valeria had all the
strength there was. I mentioned in London that she was
falling down . "
" I remember. But I couldn't take i t i n . You'll say this
is crazy, but-this is a confessio n-m y mother gave me
her word that she'd live to be ninety. "
"How could anybody do that?"
"Don't ask me-1'11 tell you what happened . The one
time my mother came to the U . S . , we went to see Pablo
Casals at Marlboro , ninety years old, rehearsing an
orchestra. We were both terribly impressed, especially
Mother. Here was this ancient man, he was shrunk
together in a single piece , no waist and no neck. He had
to sit down to conduct. He scolded . But how strong he
still was in music._ If you understand me . Now, there
was a girl in the orchestra who played the clarinet, and
she was about nineteen. He stopped the music and said
to her, 'Can't you get more life into it?' Then Mother
and I looked at each other. And when we were leaving
the shed-that outdoor hall-she said, 'Why shouldn't
I do that, too-live to be his age?' It was put as a joke ,
but it was serious underneath. "
" I t would have been better to keep i t a joke. But you
took it as a promise. "
She nodded . " I see I must have. "
"So when I warned you that she was slipping, you
brushed it off. Your mother kept her word . "
H e w as about t o say, "That's like believing i n
magic," but h e refrained. For one thing, everybody
followed magical practices of some sort-he could
identify a few of his own. And then, too, you didn't
reveal to such a woman how cleverly you observed her.
She was as intelligent-phenomenally intelligent-as
she was childlike. The boundaries between intellect and
the rest meandered so intricately that you could never
guess when you were about to trespass, wh en words
addressed to the child might be intercepted by a mind
more powerful than yours. So the Dean stared at his
wife. It was incomprehensible that Valeria should give
286 SAUL BELLOW •
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288 SAUL BELLOW
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290 SAUL BELLOW
per, she would say, "You're my walking, talking refer
ence book. I don't need to touch a dictionary. " But
grief, death , these were not your ordinary sublunary
subjects. Here he was no authority. Minna was critical,
she was angry. What was the point of telling him now
that he was not the husband she had thought she was
marrying? Was she referring to his Chicago pieces and
the fulminations they had touched off? She disliked
noise , disorder, notoriety, any publicity. Was this what
she referred to? Only a remote possibility, but it all had
to be considered , for now that Valeria was dead and she
had only him , Corde , to depend upon, total revaluation
was inevitable. So , then, who was this man? What have
we here? He tried , himself, to see what we had. An
elderly person , extensively bald, not well proportioned
(Mason was contemptuous of his legs) , sexually disrep
utable; counter, spare and strange maybe , but not in
the complimentary sense . And then there was the
moral side of things to consider. And the mental , too.
Besides , Valeria had had a different sort of husband in
mind for her daughter, a younger man , a physicist or
chemist, with whom she would have had more in
common. Somewhat painful , all this. Although Valeria
had changed her opinion ; she had come around. And
what would a chemist son-in-law have told her on her
deathbed--something more scientific , positive, intelli
gent?
Anyway he was now being reviewed da capo by his
wife , whom death had put in a rage. He had to submit
to it. But since she was going over him so closely, as if
seeing him as she had never seen him before, it might
be worthwhile to say something useful, or enlightening.
What else was there to do in the circumstances? Speak
up!
Here goes, however mistaken, was what he said to
himself.
She was, in fact , asking him a question just then:
"What does that mean, 'If we were everything we
should be' ? "
"As matters are, people feel free to plug in and plug
out ," he said. "Whatever it is , or whoever it is , contact
can be cut at will. They can pull out the plug when
they've had enough of it, or of him, or of her. It's an
easy option. It's the most seductive one. You learn to
keep your humanity to yourself, the one who appreci
ates it best . "
" I see . . . .
"
What was it that she saw? She was far from pleased
with what he said.
"Of course you see. It's the position of autonomy
and detachment, a kind of sovereignty we're all
schooled in . The sovereignty of atoms-that is, of
human beings who see themselves as atoms of intelli
gent separateness . But all that has been said over and
over. Like , how schizoid the modern personality is.
The atrophy of feelings. The whole bit. There's what's
his-name--Fairbaim. And Jung before him comparing
the civilized psyche to a tapeworm. Identical segments ,
on and on. Crazy and also boring, forever and ever.
This goes back to the first axiom of nihilism-the
highest values losing their value. "
"Why do you think you should tell me this now,
Albert?"
"It might be useful to take an overall view. Then you
mightn't blame yourself too much for not feeling as you
should about Valeria . "
"What comfort i s i t t o hear that everybody i s some
kind of schizophrenic tapeworm? Why bring me out in
the cold to tell me this? For my own good , I suppose . "
I t was n o ordinary outburst. She was tigerish , glitter
ing with rage. Her altered face , all bones , · turned
against him.
"This might not have been the moment ," he said.
"I tell you how horrible my mother's death is, and
the way you comfort me is to say everything is mon
strous. You make me a speech. And it's a speech I've
heard more than once . "
"It wasn't what you needed. I shouldn't have. The
292 SAUL BELLOW
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she said. Spangler had used different terms--cnsis,
catastrophe, apocalypse. They concluded , each from
his own standpoint , that he was seriously off base , out
of line. Naturally, he suspected this himself. He half
agreed with Mason senior-almost half. Men like
Mason senior went to business. Business was law,
engineering, advertising, insurance, banking, merchan
dising, stockbroking, politicking. Mason senior was
proud of his strength in the La Salle Street jungle.
Bunk, thought contentious Corde. Those were not
animals fighting honorably for survival , they were
money maniacs, they were deeply perverted, corrupt.
No jungle, more like a garbage dump. Leave Darwin
out of this. But-calming himself-these Mason types
belonged fully to the life of the country, spoke its
language, thought its thoughts, did its work. If he,
Corde, was different, the difference wasn't altogether
to his credit. So Mason senior believed. Corde's answer
was that he made no claim to be different. He was like
everybody else, but not as everybody else conceived it.
His own sense of the way things were had a strong claim
on him, and he thought that if he sacrificed that
sense-its truth-he sacrificed himself. Chicago was
the material habitat of this sense of his, which was, in
tum, the source of his description of Chicago. Did this
signify tha t he did not belong to the life of the country?
Not if the spirit of the times was in us by nature. We all
belonged.Something very wrong here. He pursued the
matter further, probably still feeling the painful rever
berations of his obtuseness with his wife. To belong
fully to the life of the country gave one strength, but
why should these others, in their strength, demand that
one's own sense of existence (poetry, if you like) be
dismissed with contempt?Because they were, after all,
not strong?A tempting answer, but perhaps too easy.
C† critical lady looking at one of Whistler's paintings
said, "I don't see things as you do. " The artist said,
"No, ma'am, but don't you wish you could?" A
delicious snub but again too easy.The struggle was not
294 SAUL BELLOW
the artist's struggle with the vulgar. That was pure
nineteenth century. Things were now far worse than
that.
Corde thought that he wasn't advanced enough to be
the artist of this singular demanding sense of his. In fact
he had always tried to set it aside, but it was there, he
couldn't get rid of it, and as he grew older it gained
strength and he had to give ground. It seemed to have
come into the world with him . What, for example , did
he know about Dewey Spangler? Well, he knew his
eyes, his teeth, his arms, the form of his body, its
doughnut odor; the beard was new but that was knowl
edge at first sight. That vividness of beard , nostrils,
breath, tone, was real knowledge. Knowledge? It was
even captivity. In the same way he knew his sister
Elfrida , the narrow dark head, the estuary hips, the
feminized fragrance of tobacco mixed with skin odors.
In the case of a Maxie Detillion the vividness was
unwanted, repugnant, but nothing could be done, it
was there nevertheless , impossible to fend off. With
Minna the reality was even more intimate-fingernails,
cheeks, breasts , even the imprint of stockings and of
shoe straps on the insteps of her dear feet when she was
undressing. Himself, too, he knew with a variant of the
same oddity-as, for instance, the eyes and other holes
and openings of his head, the countersunk entrance of
his ears and the avidity expressed by the dilation of his
Huguenot-Irish nostrils, the face that started at the
base of the hairy throat and rose, open, to the top of his
crown. Plus all the curiosities and passions that went
with being Albert Corde. This organic, constitutional,
sensory oddity, in which Albert Corde's soul had a
lifelong freehold, must be grasped as knowledge. He
wondered what reality was if it wasn't this, or what you
were "losing" by death, if not this. If it was only the
literal world that was taken from you the loss was not
great. Literal! What you didn't pass through your soul
didn't even exist , that was what made the literal literal.
Thus he had taken it upon himself to pass Chicago
through his own soul. A mass of data, terrible, murder
ous. It was no easy matter to put such things through.
But there was no other way for reality to happen.
Reality didn't exist "out there . " It began to be real only
when the soul found its underlying truth. In generalities
there was no coherence-none. The generality-mind,
the habit of mind that governed the world, had no force
of coherence , it was dissociative. It divided because it
was, itself, divided. Hence the schizophrenia , which
was moral and aesthetic as well as analytical. Then
along came Albert Corde in diffident persistence , but
wildly turned on, putting himself on record. "But don't
you see . .. !" He couldn't help summarizing to him
self what he should have said to Minna.
He would moreover have said (they were now rising
in the small china-closet elevator-there was no harm
in these unspoken ideas, and when all this was over she
might be willing to let her husband tell her his
thoughts) , he would have told Minna, "I imagine,
sometimes , that if a film could be made of one's life,
every other frame would be death. It goes so fast we're
not aware of it. Destruction and resurrection in alter
nate beats of being, but speed makes it seem continu
ous. But you see, kid, with ordinary consciousness you
can't even begin to know what's happening . "
Minna couldn't go to the cemetery next morning; she

was sick. Nothing by halves, she was violently sick. She
could keep nothing on her stomach, not even a cup of
tea, and she had woman trouble. Something like a
296 SAUL BELLOW •
grenade went off within the system. Gigi moved Corde

out of the bedroom. She said he would sleep in the
"drawing room," where the bulky, peeling leather
armchairs were. Well, all right . The old woman took
total charge, changing linens, putting soiled things to
soak in a tub. Two doctors, a team, came to the house
before ten o'clock. They were the ones assigned to the
diplomatic corps. "They will charge a lot, but others
will not have the drugs ," Gigi said. Corde stood by.
The physicians were a lady and a gentleman, working
together. The lady turned Minna over, the gentleman
gave her a shot. You had to admire their professional
ism, their dexterity with a needle.
"Can't we put the cemetery off till tomorrow? "
Corde asked.
A preposterous question . The announcement was
already in the papers.
Vlada Voynich volunteered to sit with Minna. So
Corde and Gigi together with one of the feeble old
uncles were driven to the cemetery by Traian in the
Dacia. Once more slammed within tin doors, and the
motor roaring under your feet. It looked like melan
choly sunny weather-low winter beams coming
through cold haze , the prevailing light russet. As a rule
Corde avoided cemeteries and never went near the
graves of rJs parents. He said it was just as easy for
your dead to visit you, only by now he would have to
hire a hall.
He did not realize that the Dacia had already been to
the crematorium and that Traian had picked up the
canister of ashes. The Dean failed therefore to under
stand why Tanti Gigi was doubled up, weeping, in the
seat behind him. He reached back to give her comfort.
She took his hand and held it. All he could see , half
turning, was that Uncle Teo, bolt upright in the comer,
preferred to stare at the street with big gray eyes as if to
dissociate himself from her keening. Her white head
was pushed against the back of the seat. Same old
woman who had changed Minna's sheets so efficiently
only a while ago , who had shown him cheerful box
camera snapshots last night-young Gigi, a high
fashion doll of the twenties in a short dress , leaning
against a lion in Trafalgar Square , waving to the folks in
Bucharest . Corde didn't learn until Traian had parked
the car beside the iron stakes of the cemetery fence that
Gigi had been bent double over the tin cylinder of
Valeria's ashes. She was pressing it to herself under the
coat. But when he helped her to the sidewalk and she
came bowed through the door, black shawl slipping
from her head, she gave him the long can to hold. He
waited until her small feet , the turned heels of scuffed
shoes, found the pavement securely; and her sloping
shoulders found the fit of the coat again-that heavy
looking light coat of synthetic fur (its realism continued
to shock him). Her dark purple long bagging mourner's
dress overhung her low shoes. Then her cardiac pa
tient's face (her face was full of illness just then) told
him that she wanted the cylinder back. And now he
identified the object in his hand. The air was cold, but
the can was warm. Passing it to her, he heard the sound
of larger fragments, bone perhaps, or dental pieces.
Perhaps they weren't even Valeria's. Who could tell
what the crematorium workers shoveled up.
They went first to the office , where the usual ex
change of official forms took place. Fees to be paid,
cigarettes to be handed over. Inside the gates, a gang of
cemetery beggars waited , more Oriental than Europe
an. Then you remembered again that Istanbul was very
close , Cairo just over the water. For contrast with the
beggars there were the family friends trying to look
decorous in their dated Parisian or Viennese suits,
shoes, dresses . Standing between beggars and friends
was the Greek Orthodox priest. Cousin Dincutza said
that he was personally acquainted with Valeria, used to
call on her occasionally. The priest was stout, strong;
he was sourly masculine, bearded , sallow, sullen; the
hem of his rusty cassock was unstitched and coming
down. There was a separate committee of sharp, benny
298 SAUL BELLOW
ladies. Perhaps it was the black clothing that made
them look so very ancient. But if they were old
Dincutza types, Corde was for them. Cousin Dincutza
was wonderful now. She took total charge of him at the
cemetery, protective, advisory. And he greatly needed
her advice. This conspicuous foreigner, the man of the
family here , was a bit lost. (All the real business, of
course , was done by Traian.) And with her jutty teeth,
whispering in rudimentary French , Dincutza instructed
him continually. As they were setting out from the
office she motioned him to go forward and take Gigi's
arm.
So they set off in a group. They walked through the
cemetery. It was dense with stones and obelisks. The
newer monuments were protected from the weather by
heavy plastic sheets fastened with belts and ropes, and
· rattling in the wind. In Chicago , middle-class families
covered their furniture with this material; here it was
the obelisks and their fresh gilt inscriptions that were
protected. No melancholy pleasant winter sunshine
now, the weather again turned dark, windy. At the
Raresh grave more mourners were waiting.
Considering the season, the color of the grass was
surprisingly fresh. Could there be some special source
of warmth underneath? There were tapers in large
numbers, leaning every which way. Some were shel
tered in lanterns but the gusts came down on the rest.
The old cousins had seated themselves on benches, and
the gypsy beggars crowded up behind-a wild lot, but
that was customary, so no special notice was taken of
their demented behavior. Dincutza observed (he must
have looked rotten, in need of her support) bow well
Valeria had kept this plot, with quelle devotion flowers
were planted. The autumn ones, small asters, had
survived the early snow. Now the priest got the service
under way. Efficient and gruff, he spoke, sang. Now
and then a howl came out. Troubles of his own,
obviously. Priests were not pampered in this part of the
world. He looked, Corde thought, like a big-bellied
tramp in his country boots. In the scuffles of the wind
the tapers blew out. Where they fell, there were
patches of soot in the grass. Old women rekindled
them. Corde shivered because he had respectfully
removed his hat while the priest chanted. Dincutza
made gestures ordering him to put it on again. Bless the
old girl. When the hair was thin you lost heat through
the top of the skull. This was elderly knowledge. She
had it. She understood.
Now came the traditional cake, white and creamy,
huge, swimming loosely and quivering on its platter.
The beggars went for it. This was their main course.
Dincutza politely offered Corde a taste, but he wanted
no part of this death sweet. Anyway, the beggars were
helping themselves with their hands. By now the gusts
had overcome the last of the tapers, which had tumbled
together in the black-spotted grass. It was time to
install Valeria's ashes in the waiting socket of the
tombstone. This, as you faced the monument, was on
the left side. There would be only Valeria and Dr.
Raresh here . From aU sides a rude rattle of plastics in
the wind, the lashed obelisks, those short Cleopatra's
needles-there was little open space , the paths were
exceedingly narrow.
A cemetery workman pulled out the disk that sealed
the socket in the granite and Gigi surrendered Valeria's
ashes to him. Corde, on Dincutza's instructions, was
holding her up. So Gigi, sobbing, gave up the metal
cylinder and the workman tried to push it into the
opening.
Regulations must have changed since the stone was
raised . The cylinder was too large . Uncle Teo and
others moved in to examine the difficulty. There was
just a shade of difference in the dimensions and if only
a few chips of granite were knocked away from the
opening the tube might slide in. On instructions from
Uncle Teo and the cousins, the workman applied his
chisel, tapped once or twice and then swung his ham
mer widely-two, three blows. Fragments sprang from
300 SAUL BELLOW •
the back of the monument, and then the material

around the socket crumbled. This was not granite , it
was cement. The rounded shoulder of the monument
came off, slid down . Gigi did not faint away but she
slumped against Corde. He held her up and a space was
cleared for her on the bench. Now the lashed sheets of
plastic over the surrounding obelisks clattered hard as if
to give it away that it was not solid marble they were
protecting but a facade. At the core of each obelisk
there was cement . Conferring together, Traian and the
relatives decided to deposit the cylinder overnight in
the ossuary. The socket could be widened, the damage
would be repaired by tomorrow.
Then the entire party walked very slowly along the
grave-bordered footpath to the principal avenue. Again
the line of beggars holding out their hands. The cylin
der was left at the low stone building (ossuary? charnel
house?) , deposited in a box. Then everyone returned to
the office by the gate.
The rest of the business was left to solid Traian in his
zooty raw tan leather jacket. He went in to arrange for
the repairs . The old colleagues and cousins separated
quickly, for it now began to rain. Umbrellas were
opened.
And suddenly the inner significance of the event (old
friends paying last respects, a mourning sister) disap
peared. Weather took over, nothing but cloud and rain,
gloom over the dark green, old people finding shelter,
the priest in his hobo boots striding over gravel,
hurrying through the big gates. Corde , feeling empty,
guided Gigi to the car. Traian trotted around to open
the doors and reattach the windshield wipers. He then
turned on the ignition and made a wide U-tum in the
vast wet avenue, brown with machine fumes. Corde
became aware how much distress had accumulated in
him only when the car passed Valeria's mourners, the
graveside group, at the tram stop. Dincutza stood
among the m . Then he said to Tanti Gigi, "Let's back up
and take Dincutza home with us. Please tell Traian .
. . . We can squeeze her into the back . "
"Oh, m y dear, what a kind thought, but w e have not
the space. "
"It could b e done ."
It couldn't. And this was not the time to press Gigi.
And by now they were already blocks beyond the tram
stop. But it gave him a hard pang. Gigi said , "We are
all well accustomed to the trams, Albert . Everybody,
but everybody, rides them. And although the steps are
too high for elderly passengers, the service, further
more, is excellent." But Corde was sick at heart, all the
same. A grind o f two hours, perhaps, on the trolley car.
Eighty-year-old Dincutza had looked after him. He
went home in style while she waited in the rain . There
must in addition be a special kind of fatigue--<emetery
fatigue-felt by people who were aware that they
would soon be back to stay. He could anticipate that
himself.
Minna was asleep when they returned, and Vlada
offered him a drink. He took more than one . He filled
his glass several times-for the chill , for the cement, for
the dark stone, bone, charnel smell, and for Cousin
Dincutza. The fermented plum liquor made him smell
like a still .
White and full-faced-<iark lipstick, dyed hair, wide
bosom, bunchy hips-Vlada looked at him with sympa
thy. "Getting a little thick for you?" she said.
"Getting? It's been all along. How is Minna?"
"Not too well. Before she fell asleep , she wanted to
talk about all the things that had to be done yet."
"What is she planning?"
"Not she , so much. Tanti Gigi. Important projects. "
I f h e had encouraged her, Vlada might have made
satirical comments about Tanti Gigi. There were hints
of that, he saw them, but he kept her honest. She said,
"I came to sit in the study when Minna went to sleep,
because the telephone had been ringing. I think they
302 SAUL BELLOW •
gave her Demerol, so she isn't likely to hear it. Poor

Minna, she's never had to take this much . . . . "
"Nothing like this, no. "
"She forgot what Eastern Europe was like. With her
mother's protection , she may never have known it as
the rest of us did. As Americans, even if the place is
bugged, we can speak freely here. Valeria had plenty of
trouble , of course , they almost destroyed her, but she
was exceptionally strong and well connected."
"Why shouldn't her mother have protected her?"
said Corde .
"Why, of course , it was natural," said Vlada. "And
people here all are dying to send their gifted children to
the West. A mad desire to get out. What would Minna
have amounted to if she had stayed? After it became
clear that she wasn't coming back, the Minister of
Education called Valeria in. He was a tough old
Stalinist. Valeria asked him , 'What were you prepared
to do for her?' She said, 'My daughter knows how her
mother was treated here . ' But you've heard this before.
Well , here we are, Albert-what?-five thousand , six
thousand miles from Chicago? . . . By the way, there
was a call for you, earlier, from Paris. A man named
Spangler. Is that the columnist? Is he a friend of yours?
He said he'd call back within the hour."
"Yes, it is the famous Spangler. Well, well. He must
have news for me . "
"He didn't tell m e anything. I said you'd be back
soon from the cemetery."
"There must be a result in the case . He wouldn't call
me otherwise. He should have told you something. Just
like Spangler. . . . "
"Why don't we chat. It'll help you to bear the
suspense," said Vlada. "I always hear good things from
you when you let yourself go. "
" I f peculiar. "
"All the better when they are. I realize you haven't
decided yet about Beech."
"I haven't been able to think about lead. Lead is
heavy and I'm feeling light . But I haven't forgotten, it's
one of the things I keep at the back of my mind. I still
haven't got it clear what Beech expects . "
"You think he'll expect total agreement with his
views, and that would make you his mouthpiece?"
"He's the scientist. His views would be sound . Mine
would only be impressions. "
" Wh y should that enter into it?" said Vlada. "I don't
see why there should be a conflict if you limit yourself
to reporting. "
Corde said , "He takes an apocalyptic view of the
poisoning of the earth. If I didn't accept his picture we
might not get an) vhere . Let's give it a quick inspec
tion: First man conquers nature , and then he learns that
conquered nature has lost its purity and he's very upset
by this loss. But it's not science that's to blame , it's
technocrats and politicians. They've misused science.
Yes, I see this is an unfair simplification. I admire the
man. But I suspect that if I didn't buy his apocalypse
he'd be annoyed, even wounded. "
"But your articles had apocalyptic emotions in
them," said Vlada. "That's just what got him . "
"You can't hitch these two apocalypses together.
Doesn't he believe he can straighten me out? Some
thing like, 'I can give the man the real reason for this
anarchy he reported. It's lead poisoning, lead insult to
the brain .' My friend Spangler was very sharp with me
about catastrophes. He told me I went too far, being
poetical , mentioning the Antichrist. He's dead against
the whole Antichrist business. It's too theological and
Moral Majority for his taste. Besides, he's a journalist
with a following of millions, masses of people who
depend on the press to keep them in balance (what else
have they got?) . I wouldn't be surprised if he believed
that it was up to spokesmen like him-maybe primarily
to himself alone-to ensure stability, to put down
disorder with his own behind. Fat little Dewey Span
gler, as long as he sits tight and bears" down with his
backside he can suppress evil and save us from anarchy.
306 SAUL BELLOW •
kidney dialysis is ninety thousand dollars a year in a

clinic that keeps six or seven dim, unproductive lives
going-will we let these old folks watch the television
for another year yet? "
" O n the other side, it's brutality ," said Vlada.
"On the other side, it's the archaic standard, Orien
tal and despotic, affliction accepted as the ground of
existence, its real basis. By that standard we're un
formed, we Americans. What do we think the funda
mentals are, anyway-the human truth! And this fuck
ing Colonel was running us through the B rief Course , a
refresher for Minna and an introduction for me, the
representative of the rival superpower with his un
formed character. I've heard Europeans say that the
American character doesn't even exist yet. It's still
kicking in the womb. The French, the Germans, they
know a little more about the archaic pain-level stan
dard. But they live now as we do, comfortably. Only
they've had it. They had the trenches in the first war,
and the bombing of cities in the second , and the camps.
They'd like to retire from history for a while. They're
on holiday. They've been on holiday since they cleared
away the wreckage in 1945. I don't blame them. I only
observe that it prevents rigorous positions from being
taken. In that respect they share the American condi
tion. Life is highly enjoyable and there's great reluc
tance to focus clearly on a pain level . And when a
brutal action is necessary-well, think of the scene of
our withdrawal from Saigo n . "
"I thought when you were talking about your friend
Spangler that you were going to be a little more
amusing."
"When we've worn ourselves out with our soft
nihilism, the Russians would like to arrive with their
hard nihilism. They feel humanly superior. Even the
Russian dissidents , especially the right wing, take the
high tone with us. They say, 'We haven't got justice or
personal freedom but we do have warmth, humanity,
brotherhood , and our afflictions have given us some
character. All you can offer us is supermarkets. '
Whereas the best defense that liberal democracy can
make goes like this: 'True, we're short on charisma and
fraternal love , although you have it in debased forms ,
don't kid yourselves about that. What we do have in the
West is a kind of rational citizens' courage which you
don't understand in the least. At our best we can be
patient, we keep our heads in crisis , we can be decent in
a cold steady way. Don't underestimate us. ' "
"Do you buy this?"
"No . "
"Why don't you?"
"I don't think you can be managerial and noble at the
same time . Do you think those Chicago articles are
about rational citizens' courage?"
"I somehow expected your inspired recitation would
have something to do with Chicago . "
Corde said, "You're right. Let m e try that now. Here
in Bucharest I've been thinking about those articles.
Why did I write them? It was late in life for me to act up
and sail up the Chicago River to make such a bristling
gunboat attack. I even seem to have thought readers
would be grateful for this, another sign of immaturity.
In middle age I came back to Chicago to make a new
start. Ten years later, I may have to do it again. It's like
inexhaustible adolescence, a new start every few years.
And at the outset I didn't intend to be provoking. I
started out in all innocence. I took a light tone. I even
thought it might be fun. Like quoting Matthew Arnold
about the stockyards in 1884: 'Pigsticking? No , I
haven't gone to see the pigsticking.' I wasn't looking for
trouble. No sermons to preach about the death of cities
or the collapse of civilization. I'm too much of a
Chicagoan to feel up to that. Not for me , dear God, to
work all this out ! I sympathize up to a point with the
objections of my friend Spangler. He accused me of
abyssifying and catastrophizing. We have a weakness i n
America for this. Partly it's been first-class show busi
ness. We've been brought up for generations on Cecil
•
308 SAUL BELLOW
B . De Mille's 'special effects'-the Sign of the Cross ,
lions and Christian martyrs, the destruction of Sodom,
the last days of Pompeii. This poor make-believe,
however, is a dangerous distraction . Because this is a
time of the breaking of nations. It's all true . Now,
Spangler pointed out that you begin with the abyss and
end up with Jones of Jonestown, where death was
mixed up with 'special effects .' But it doesn't seem to
me that I was being histrionic. I didn't want to demon
strate or remonstrate or advocate or prophesy. I most
certainly did not intend to set myself up as the spokes
man of the sufferer . But perhaps Spangler's main
charge against me was that I was guilty of poetry. And I
don't know exactly what to make of that. He himself
was keen on poetry in his youth. He's now a spokes
man , though, and poets never really were liked in
America. Benjamin Franklin said better one good
schoolmaster than twenty poets. That's why when we
have most need of the imagination we have only
'special effects' and histrionics. But for a fellow like me ,
the real temptation of abyssifying is to hope that the
approach of the 'last days' might be liberating, might
compel us to reconsider deeply, earnestly. In these last
days we have a right and even a duty to purge our
understanding. In the general weakening of authority,
the authority of the ruling forms of thought also is
reduced , those forms which have done much to bring us
into despair and into the abyss. I don't need to mind
them anymore. For science there can be no good or
evil. But I personally think about virtue, about vice. I
feel free to. Released, perhaps , by all the crashing.
And in fact everybody has come under the spell of 'last
days . ' Isn't that what the anarchy of Chicago means?
Doesn't it have a philosophical character? Think of a
beautiful black chick who spends days with a razor
'
hollowing out a copy of Ivanhoe for her desperate
lover. Think how symbolic his actions are when he fires
a shot into the floor of Judge Makowski's courtroom.
He rushes out , they kill him . He dies with histrionic
flash. Shot in the head, the head he was probably
stoned out of, he leaves us a message. And what's the
message? . . . 'You better be more rigorous, man! You
better think about the first and last things . ' " The
telephone was about to ring. It gave its preliminary
chirrup.
"Maybe what I've been saying proves that I myself
suffer from 'insult. ' "
The phone rang and he took the call. "You may have
heard already, or am I the first?" said Dewey.
"The first what?"
"Then I am the first. The jury found that man of
yours guilty , and he got a sixteen-year sentence. You
have a victory. "
"How did you hear this?"
"From my office in Washington. Is it exciting? I had
my people alerted and they phoned me just a while ago
at the Meurice. Do you feel good about it?"
"Sixteen years. I feel worked up. "
"Well, i t went a s you wanted it. I bet your cousin
Detillion is disappointed. "
" I wonder. Win o r lose , i t was bound t o improve his
reputation. Chicago is still more his scene than it is
mine. Dewey, listen , I'm grateful to you for taking the
trouble. I'm thankful for your call . "
"We had a couple o f memorable talks ," said Spang
ler. "Mter forty years, to find out how much you still
have in common with a friend is damn important. I
hope to stay in touch now . "
Corde returned t o Vlada, sitting beside her o n the
orange brocade sofa with the Oriental inlaid back,
behind them the drizzling city and in the next room his
sick wife , but mercifully, warmly sleeping, her large
eyes closed , his pretty lady, lately so ravaged.
"I gather that you are the winner," said Vlada.
"It went as I wanted it. As I suppose I did . . . . "
"That at least is over."
"Going back will be a little simpler now . "
"Simpler-you're referring t o t h e college? "
•
310 SAUL BELLOW
"Partly. "
"Was it only the man, o r the woman also?"
"She gets a separate bench trial, and with plea
bargaining-that's how it was explained to me-she'll
get about eight years . "
"So . . . there's your justice. "
"Nothing comes out neat and even. B u t those two
cost the boy his life. I don't take much stock in the
punishment, but the alternative was that they would go
scot-free. It's true I used clout and special privileges to
nail them. It's true that nobody will change, the jails
stink and nothing significant has been added. In jail,
out of j ail, Lucas Ebry and Riggie Hines are exactly the
same. There are millions more where they come from
-not attached to life , and nobody can suggest how to
attach them. Now listen, Vlada, Minna and I have got
to get out of here. If she's going to be really sick. "
"Whether it's sickness o r mourning . . . "
"In any case, I'll take no chances with Communist
hospitals, and I won't wait until she's too sick to travel .
Either Zurich or Frankfurt would be a short flight."
"There's your phone again," said Vlada.
It was Miss Parson , speaking from his office. "The
man has been sentenced. "
"A friend just called from Paris with the news . "
"The Provost said I should tell you how well i t came
out, from his point of view . "
" I ' m sure he's glad it's over."
"And he sent a message to the poor darling-how is
she? The Provost has been in touch with the observato
ry and she has-you both have-accommodations at
Palomar next month, the fifteenth and the sixteenth . "
"Now there's a help ," said Corde.
"Now then , did Dr. Voynich give you the news about
your sister and the Judge?"
"Dr. Voynich is sitting here with me . Of course I've
heard about the marriage. "
"How nice . " Miss Parson had chatted her way t o the
commanding heights of gossip. "I talked to your sister
just now, wondering whether she would have a message
for you, and before I could congratulate her she told
me that her son had taken off. "
"He's gone somewhere?"
"I'm just coming to that. He's been angry. Very
angry."
"Over the marriage or the verdict?"
"He's left the country. "
"Where did he g()-how does she know that?"
"He charged his ticket to her account. He went to
her travel agent, and he's now in Mexico, so far as she
knows. She didn't discuss it with me , but he's under
bond, isn't he?"
"He may have gone to have his sulks in some nice
tropical place. "
Corde said this not because he believed i t but in
order to move the conversation to another subject.
Mason had little interest in sunny holidays. Already, at
the age of twelve , he couldn't have cared less about the
porgies and the flounders. Let them stay where they
were . Let Uncle Albert , his leg laid open by rows of
barnacles, join the fishes in the drink-him with his
abstracted look, falling into the sea. Corde was in no
mood to chat with Miss Porson and speculate about his
unhappy sister on the transatlantic telephone. Miss
Parson with her good white hair and her calamine
colored Alexander Woollcott face was warmly sympa
thetic, but he didn't at all care to bandy civilities with
her.
"There's somebody who wants to say hello, Dean.
Lydia Lester is standing here. "
"Oh! Let m e talk t o her," said Corde.
Not much was said.
"Well , it's over."
"I'm sorry I had to leave during the trial . "
" I understand that. I'm sorry about your wife . . .
your mother-in-law. "
Slender, nervously pretty, Lydia Lester had long hair
to shield her from the world, reticent long hands, pink
312 SAUL BELLOW ·-
lips. From the bad side of the tracks unwanted reality

had descended on her {how the tracks meandered
now ! ) . And which way would she go? Back to maidenli
ness , he expected. "What are your plans?" he said. She
mentioned none. He said he was coming back soon and
hoped she would have dinner with them . He did not ask
to speak to Miss Parson again, but put the phone down
lightly , giving her no time to cut in.
"Do I understand from the conversation that your
nephew has taken off?" said Vlada.
"Letting his mother have it because she married
without his consent. His new stepfather is political
enough to get the case against him dismissed and
recover the bond-about five thousand bucks, I think.
So Mason has gone to Central America to look over the
revolutionary options. Intimidation of witnesses is no
big deal, a mere college boy scaring black men who
have criminal records. But there is one piece of good
news, an open date at the Palomar Observatory."
"Minna won't want to miss that," Vlada said.
"Got any practical advice?"
"Take her away as soon as you can. I have another
week here, and I can lend a hand with Gigi. They won't
force her out of the apartment; that's not hard to take
care of, it's done all the time. And as they'd say in
Chicago , the authorities won't make waves. It's nothing
to them that you're a dean, but it counts that you're a
journalist. Also that you're connected with the Ambas
sador and with the famous columnist Mr. Spangler.
They won't bother your old Tanti Gigi . You be nice to
them now and they'll be nice to you, and forget the
bygones . Are you so eager to get home, yourself?"
"It's not as if we were going back to order, beauty,
calm and peace ."
She said, "Still , you'll be glad to see Lake Michigan
from your window again, I'm sure of that."
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313
3 14 SAUL BELLOW •
the nurse, X-rays of her chest were taken, she was

examined by specialists, given shots. She slept a great
deal and her husband, who came twice daily, some
times studied her-even lying on her side , she appeared
purposive, going forward, the black hair spread about
her, and in profile her large, female sleeping eye
painfully severe under the lid, as if she were getting
stern lessons in her sleep. He was driving back and
forth along the lakefront afternoon and evening, bring
ing glycerin and rose water for her hands, nail scissors,
plastic tubes of shampoo, scientific papers she wasn't
yet able to read. Irritable, she found fault with him, and
sometimes he was wounded-that is, the old self would
have been wounded.
The habits he had acquired in Eastern Europe were
curiously binding, he found. He did not make full use
of the double bed but slept on its edge as if he had been
laid there like a yardstick . Mornings he sat in his chair
just as he had sat in Minna's old-country room. Vlada
'
had been right ; he was glad to see the lake from his
window and have the freshwater ocean for company.
At his back the city, unquiet, the slum and its armies
just over the way: blacks, Koreans, East Indians,
Chippewas, Thais and hillbillies, squad cars, ambu
lances, firefighters, thrift shops, drug hustlers, lousy
bars, alley filth. In the elevator , Mrs. Morford had told
him that she was waiting her turn in the butcher shop
when a young man put his hand into her coat pocket.
She said, "What are you doing?" and he answered,
"What do you think I'm doing?" Mr. Vinck, the cop on
the fifth floor, was burglarized and his collection of
handguns was taken. Teams of thieves ripped off the
wheels of cars in the building garage and left them
sitting on bricks. The elevators were vandalized, swasti
kas scratched into the hard metal of the walls and the
numbered buttons pried out of the panels. Old people
like herself, said Mrs. Morford, her eyes sadly down
cast, lived behind locked doors. And, thought Corde
(oh , so widely read, what was the good o f it) , if the
good bourgeois of the nineteenth century could loll and
dream in his overfurnished Biedenneier coziness, if his
drawing room was like a box in the theater of the world,
Mrs. Morford on her inflation-shrunk pension , among
all the comforts of home, was shut in like a birdie in a
cage.
He didn't go to the college ; the thought of it repelled
him. That would be a bad scene. He wasn't ready for
Alec Witt and he didn't notify Miss Parson of his
return. He planned to telephone his sister on New
Year's Day. To congratulate her wouldn't be too hard,
but he preferred to postpone talking to her about
Mason. He drove out once to try to find the building
where Rick Lester had been killed. He knew the block
but not the address. The buildings were all Chicago
six-flats in any case, heavy brick, beginning to bow with
age , the courtyards miry and gathering litter. It was
into one of these courtyards that Lester had fallen.
Corde put to himself the question Mason had stuck him
with about Lester's death-did it matter :† much? Was
it King David crying out over Absalom, was it Lear
fumbling with Cordelia's button? There was a heavy
death traffic which called perhaps for a revision of
views. "Can't go through it on the old iambic pentame
ter , " was how Corde formulated it. Must modernize.
But at home he sat usually with his back to the
decayed city view. From his comer window he could
see the Loop and its famous towers, but he looked
directly downward at the working of the water, on
bright days a clear green, easing its mass onto the
beaches, white. The waters bathing the waters in sun,
and every drop having its own corpuscle of light, the
light meantime resembling the splash of heavy rain
drops on paved surfaces-the whole sky clear, clear but
tense. On days of heavy weather you felt the shock of
the waves and heard their concussion through the
building. Under low clouds you might have been look-
316 SAUL BELLOW
ing at Hudson's Bay and when the floes came close you
wouldn't have been surprised to see a polar bear. Only
you didn't smell brine , you smelled pungent ozone , the
inland-water raw-potato odor. But there was plenty of
emptiness, as much as you needed to define yourself
against, as American souls seem to do. Cities (this had
been impressed on Corde when he pored over Blake-
Spangler had not stopped him by kidding him about
it)--d ties were moods, emotional states, for the most
part collective distortions , where human beings thrived
and suffered, where they invested their souls in pains
and pleasures, taking these pleasures and pains as
proofs of reality. Thus "Cain's city built with murder,"
and other cities built with Mystery, or Pride , all of them
emotional conditions and great centers of delusion and
bondage , death. It seemed to Corde that he had made
an effort to find out what Chicago, U . S . A . , was built
with. His motive-to follow this through-came out of
what was eternal in man. What mood was this city? The
experience , puzzle , torment of a lifetime demanded
interpretation. At least he was beginning to understand
why he had written those articles. Nobody was much
affected by them, unless it was himself. So here was the
emptiness before him , water ; and there was the filling
of emptiness behind him , the slums.
Anyway , he slept on the edge of the bed, in a
provisional position, feeling something of a stranger in
these most familiar surroundings, made his coffee , read
the papers , had the waves for company. He did not go
in for African violets again ; they would only die while
he and Minna were at Mount Palomar and visiting
colleagues at La Jolla and in the Bay Area. He threw
out the dead plants and kept the potting soil in a plastic
bag at the bottom of the broom closet, along with shoe
polish and floor wax. He went out to the greenhouse on
Peterson Road opposite the cemetery and bought a red
azalea for Minna's room , a small tree , the finest to be
had. This offering, like almost all his offerings , was
problematic. In her present condition she was hard to
please . Human contact was repugnant to her unless its
intent was to heal.
Nevertheless he made the lakefront trip twice daily,
and he deliberately confined his conversation with
Minna to ordinary subjects. He hadn't washed the car
because dust made it less noticeable to car thieves. He
had telephoned the laundry. Mail had accumulated in
the receiving room, but he hadn't brought it upstairs;
he'd wait until the second of January and then have
Miss Porson open and sort it. For old times' sake he had
stopped at the Lincoln Park Zoo on the way to the
hospital , not to look at the animals but to see whether
the Viking ship was still there . A team of Norwegians
had rowed it across the Atlantic ninety years Rgo and it
had been preserved near the waterfowl pond, where he
and Dewey Spangler had had their ignorant arguments
about Plato. He was sure that there had been Viking
shields hung decoratively along the gunwales . If they
had been mere ornaments they had rotted away, but
some of the great oars were still there, laid under the
ship.
He said, "Will you be starting up your dancing
lessons again when we get back from California?"
"You never liked me to go ."
"On the contrary, I liked it very much when you
came home full of color, lively, pretty. Is there another
astronomer in the world who can tap-dance?"
She said , "What about you and your club-have you
gone swimming there?"
No, he didn't go to the club. Certain passages in his
articles showed why he was wise to absent himself.
In the locker room I tune in on the conversation of a

new member (Nick? Jimmy? ) . Naked , he holds before
him a Bacchic belly from which, however, he appears
to get no Bacchic pleasure. He is rather gloomy,
shortish, curly-haired with large sideburns , hanging red
cheeks, springi ng whiskers. A regretful eye tells you
that this vital prosperity is not his fault , is unwanted ,
318 SAUL BELLOW
•
does not ensure Nick's happiness. His business? He

runs a girlie nightclub in one of the suburbs. Wrapped
in a towel, he is one of those useful members who like
to give advice. A young executive comes, the black
bearded type with chic eyeglasses, a long slender
turtleneck, an attache case. As he undresses he asks
Nick for suggestions. One of the men in his office is
being married next week, and the boys want to give him
a final stag party. "We're thinking of one of th..: Rush
Street joints . " Nick warns him, "You're asking for a
rip-off. As soon as a fellow comes in they make him buy
a fifty-dollar bottle of stinking champagne . Why don't
you fel lows rent a good hotel suite. Have dinner
served , and if you hire a couple of girls to put on a
show, it'll be a nicer evening and much cheaper. You'll
get more mileage from the girls on a private arrange
ment, and it's undignified for professional people to go
to Rush Street and be hustled like conventioneers and
eat and drink a lot of crap." He warns another member
not to patronize the barbershop next door to the club.
"They charge you ten bucks for a lousy job-force you
to have a shampoo. You just washed your hair in the
shower, didn't you? Why should he wash it again and
sock you ten bucks , plus a two-dollar tip, and still you'll
come out looking like an Eskimo woman chewed on
your hairline with her teeth. " Nick knows every con
there is and he is keen to protect the dignity of the
members.
And this one , about another member, a young

lawyer, who explained on the telephone why he had to
miss an appointment with me at the club.
As he speaks I hear a sort of glad misery or cheerful

desperation, his happiness at being where the action is :
"I had to go to a closing. My associate prepared the
documents while I was out of town, and he screwed up.
I had to straighten it out. The first six months the seller
was not supposed to get a share of the net from my
client, and they dropped this clause from the contract.
When I arrived and saw what was going on I said, No
way. I t wouldn't have been more than fifteen thou, but

I wasn't going to let my guy get tucked even that much.
The deal was over a restaurant where your average
check runs thirty or forty bucks per capita. Not that my
client is the type who would keep straight books . But in
the meantime, what happens? The cops descend on the
restaurant and bust it on account of the liquor license.
It's that crazy new captain on Chicago Avenue. He has
a special hard-on for the place, because somebody told
him it's supposed to be Sinatra's favorite when he's in
town, where his whole entourage goes , and that's big
business, because when the word is out that you might
see Sinatra there's always a crowd of yokels sitting
waiting for a glimpse. All that crowd of yokels are on
junk and the Chicago Avenue captain has a thing about
dopies. He couldn't close the place, the management is
entitled to a hearing, but it didn't do business much
good when a dozen cops with helmets and riot equip
ment broke in, like 1968. They did it twice and scared
hell out of the diners. There was only me to take care of
all this, and it was one of those days . I'm so sorry I
stiffed you"-stood you up. All this in a voice that
trembles with electrical excitement. The big time. I
leave the club and wait at the bank of elevators. The
lake wind bellows and rages in the shafts , those long
wild gullets . . . .
Corde knew better than to tell Minna why he might

be uncomfortable at the club, discreetly avoiding men
tioning his articles to her, the troubles he had brought
on himself. He saw how it was, undisguised , when she
looked at him-the blank of death. Her mother's death
had taught her death . Triviality was insupportable to
her. Her judgment was rigorous, angry. She wanted no
part of his journalism, articles, squalor. Suburban
pimps or smart-ass lawyers beneath contempt and the
great hordes, even of the doomed, of no concern to
her, nor the city of destruction, nor its assaults, arsons,
prisons and deaths. And wiping out all fond memories ,
for the present at least , adopting the universe as a
standard.
320 SAUL BELLOW
"I think I should have a talk with Dr. Tyche."
"I wonder if I didn't do the wrong thing by coming
back now. I worry about Gigi."
"You were in no condition to help her. Gigi is all
right, don't worry about Gigi. And you're better off
here , at Wesleyan with Dr. Tyche."
"He's an angelic old man . "
"That's exactly what he i s . I had him i n mind . "
"I suppose you were right . "
"To insist?"
"To take over when you did . "
She had her doubts about Corde's good intentions.
About her mother there were no doubts; she carne
from her womb and they were bound by true bonds.
She had no doubts about Dr. Tyche, whose small old
face was gentle and healthy. Age and devotion to
patients had refined his goodness . But Corde-she
loved him but he was suspect. And so he should be. We
were a bad lot . For a complex monster like her hus
band, goodness might be just a mood, and love simply
an investment that looked good for the moment. Today
you bought Xerox. Next month, if it didn't work out,
you sold it. It was an uncomfortable sort of judgment ,
but Corde was beginning to realize that this was how he
wanted to be j udged. Minna gave him a true reflection
of his entire self. The intention was to recognize
yourself for what you (pitiably, preposterously) were.
Then whatever good you found , if any, would also be
yours. Corde bought that. He wasn't looking for ac
commodation, comfort.
He had a very short talk with Dr. Tyche in one of the
high corners of the hospital-to the south the mighty
towers of the city, to the west collapse and devastation.
"What's her condition , really , Doctor?"
"Well, a serious trauma . "
"Her mother promised t o li\re a decade yet. "
" I see. It's a broken promise , too. Well, the death of
a parent does things like that to people. "
"Yes, can turn u s childish . I've heard , Doc, that in
the crucial days of the female cycle a woman can have
edema of the brain , and irrational fits? . . .
"
The doctor was too canny to answer this, and smiled

it away. You didn't give out medical opinions which
might later be quoted in disputes. "When you get the
curse your brain swells. The doctor told me that ! "
Tyche would only say, "The iron and potassium levels
are very low, and the whole system weakened . "
"Will she b e able t o go to Mount Palomar?"
"She asks me that every day. I don't see why she
shouldn't . "
Corde drove horne, comforted. The weather was
bright, keen blue, an afternoon of January thaw. His
car had been parked in the sun, so he didn't need to
tum the heater on. At home he set a kitchen chair out
on the porch. It was mild enough to sit there , on the lee
side of the fiat. The light was the light of warmer
seasons, not of deep winter. It came up from his own
harmonies as well as down from above . The lake was
steady, nothing but windless water before him. He had
to look through the rods of his sixteenth-story porch ,
an interference of no great importance . Whatever you
desired would be measured out through human de
vices . Did the bars remind you of jail? They also kept
you from falling to your death. Besides, he presently
felt himself being carried over the water and into the
distant colors. Here in the Midwest there sometimes
occurred the blues of Italian landscapes and he passed
through them, very close to the borders of sense , as if
he could do perfectly well without the help of his eyes,
seeing what you didn't need human organs to see but
experiencing as freedom and also as joy what the
mortal person, seated there in his coat and gloves,
otherwise recorded as colors, spaces, weights. This was
different. It was like being poured out to the horizon ,
like a great expansion. What if death should be like
this, the soul finding an exit. The porch rail was his
figure for the hither side. The rest, beyond it , drew you
constantly as the completion of your reality.
The Cordes, after Minna was discharged from the
hospital, attended a party given by Judge Sorok.in's
brother and his wife . Corde tried to get out of it. He
said to Elfrida , through whom the invitation came,
"Parties? No. Too tiring . " But Elfrida answered ,
"Don't impose your unsocial habits on her. You're a
fusspot , Albert. You want to keep her in a gloomy room
and fuss over her. She's naturally a cheerful person and
needs to get out. If it were an evening affair it might
strain her, but this is only a brunch in lively company. "
Corde got the message: Elfrida recommended Minna to
follow her own example. Grieving daughters like
pained mothers should behave with female gallantry.
"And I haven't seen Minna at all," said Elfrida. "For
that matter, I haven't seen you, Albert , and you're
going west soon. Are you on leave , by the way?"
"I'm taking care of Minna. The college thinks I
couldn't make better use of my time ."
"My brother-in-law and his wife won't bore you, I
promise . "
"What i s he?"
"Ellis Sorokin? Engineering consultants, cybernetics
-he runs a big company. His wife is a computer
wizard. Or witch. She's a very pretty woman, and
fashionable, and a horsewoman. You'd never believe
computers were her line . "
"Let m e talk t o Minna about this . "
"No brush-off, mind you," said Elfrida.
322
" I'll get back to you, Elfrida. I can't tell Minna that
I've accepted for her, you know that . "
"There you're right. She has a mind of her own . "
Minna said , "Yes, I'd like to go. I want t o see
Elfrida. I love her really. And don't you see , Albert,
she wants her family to be represented at this party.
The new in-laws. And at a time when Mason is being so
lousy to her. If we don't attend she'll feel let down. "
Minna's motives were wholly feminine. But you would
be ill-advised to mention your insights to her. Don't be
smart. Make no speeches.
"If you think you're up to this," said Corde , deep
voiced.
"If I run out of steam I can leave early . "
For the occasion , Minna curled her hair, wore a red
knitted suit with a white trim, a mermaid brooch that
had been Valeria's, and Valeria's rings, the ones that
had been sawed from her fingers--Corde had just
brought them back from the jeweler. He himself, never
one for soft raiment, looked like a dean on Sunday. He
had left his best suit in the old country , together with
shirts, sweaters and socks. Minna had rubbed some
color into her cheeks. She still looked pinched but her
skin was smoother, the hard dints of grief under her
lower lip were going. Some would say that this was the
will to live, or the natural resilience of the organism.
Well, perhaps , but Corde would have said that she had
work to do . There was that zone of star formation
waiting for her. Minna did not talk much to her
husband about stars ; he lacked the physics for it.
Perhaps she didn't care to discover how ignorant he was
of what concerned her most. To try to work the subject
up would have been a mistake. He would have pestered
her with half-baked , layman's questions, involving her
in tedious explanations impossible for him to follow. So
he let that alone. But if she would live for the sake of
her stars, he didn't ask for more. She , from her side,
was clever , too. She let him tell her about Clemenceau
324 SAUL BELLOW
or Chicherin or Jefferson or Lenin so that she could
exclaim , "Really, I am so dumb ! " They were even,
then, a dumb matching a dumb. Now, that was i ntelli
gent, and strategic, and sympathetically graceful . You
might love a woman for her tactfulness alone.
At Ellis Sorokin's Lakeshore Drive high-rise apart
ment building, a Negro took your car in the garage, a
Mexican in green uniform was your doorman, and then
you rose in a silent elevator to the altitudes of power.
When you got out on the fortieth floor you looked as an
equal at the_ Hancock Tower, "Big John," and at the
sugar-cube sparkle of the Standard Oil Building-<>n all
the supershapes of the Loop , in which , perhaps, some
sense of common worship was concentrated . The win
dows of the Sorokin apartment descended nearly to the
floor, but though you were so high, you didn't really
need to feel that you might fall, and you enjoyed the
safe sense of danger.
The Judge's brother resembled him-the same firm ,
smooth head , tanned creased face and thin mouth and
black eyes, a touch of the Indian or the Tartar there.
His wife w as blond and elegant. Her colo1 was fresh .
She had money t o spend and-why not?-she spent it,
in her innocence, on high fashion. Her elegance was
not intimidating, she didn't lay it on you oppressively.
Wandering slowly over the ceiling there were green
balloons, dozens of them, each one tied with lace
ribbon, as expensive as possible. "And what a lot of
work," said Corde. The young woman for all her
wealth and computer witchery was greatly pleased. " I
put in hours and hours blowing them u p . B u t it's a very
important occasion , you know . "
Corde would have guessed a party for the newly
weds. Not at all ; it was the dog's birthday party.
Champagne , sturgeon , lobster, Russian eggs for start
ers, and lunch to follow. The dog was black, huge,
gentle-a Great Dane. You were introduced to him in
his circular wicker bed, aimost a divan , where he lay
indolent. Touching, Corde thought as he bent down to
stroke the soft animal. The dog sighed under his hand.
Wrapped and ribboned birthday presents were stacked
beside his bed , and there were congratulatory tele
grams.
Elfrida looked somewhat nervous and worn, yes, but
also she was deliciously swarthy, discernibly a bride.
Her arms, still fine, were heavily braceleted and she
carried , as always , the mixed feminine fragrance of
perfume and tobacco-almost rank but in the end a
good pungency . She embraced Minna, and her brother
(no grudges there) , and Corde shook the Judge's
hand-a rude hand, and all of a piece , as though the
fingers were incapable of separate action (outdoor men
sometimes have this iron sort of handshake). Congratu
lations! The bearded Judge was all friendliness. He
gave Corde reassuring masculine signals: everything
under control, not to worry.
It was a small party. One of the couples owned a
Great Dane from the same litter, so there was a
relationship . The husband carried color photos of the
dog in his wallet and showed them at the table. These
were all church people. The Sorokins, too. Episcopal.
Their minister was present . Also a classy old woman, a
grande dame , very old (her wrists and ankles appeared
lymphatic, and her sleeves were adapted to these
swellings at the wrist). Very lively, she was obviously
devoted to the worldly minister-he knew his way
around. The grande dame was a connoisseur of minia
ture reproductions and knew all the most important
collections of Lilliputian rooms . She remembered that
the celebrated Mrs. Thorne had commissioned a tiny
Jackson Pollock, but it didn't please her and she sent it
back. "Imagine what it must be worth now ! " Corde
could be social enough , when it was necessary. It
helped to fondle the Great Dane when the animal came
nudging and sighing. What to do with all this animal
nature , seemed to be the burden of the dog's groans.
326 SAUL BELLOW
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grande dame , her brittle hair scarfed up in Gucci silk
holding these toys by the bands of suggestive lace. On
the fortieth floor you were already in the lower stratum
of the upper air, out in the naked wind. The balloons ,
released over the rail, were snatched straight up , out of
sight in a vertical updraft, and then they reappeared in
flight and you saw them by the dozen spotted over the
sky and driven apart, far out over the lake , towards the
dark sky-wall where the mills stood . With Sorokin's
field glasses you could follow them awhile yet, and then
you couldn't see them anymore . The wind had boomed
them into Michigan.
Elfrida admitted to Corde , quietly, that Minna
wasn't looking well. "You weren't exaggerating. If
you're going to California, you should arrange a long
weekend in Santa Barbara , rest in one of those good
hotels. "
Minna was thanking the hostess, in her full , elabo
rate style-she was strong on etiquette. "We'll be
going," said Corde. He kissed his sister with a quick
sense of flying through a zone of familiar warmth. She
pressed her long cheek to his circular one. "You did
right , Elfrida , " he said.
"There is the Mason problem, still," said the Judge.
"Where is he now?"
"Down in Nicaragu a , the last we heard. He tele
phoned his mother, but wouldn't say what he was doing
or where he was going. He's not ready to forgive her . "
"For bringing a white child into the world?" said
Corde . "Or however he interprets the primal curse?
But I don't think that self-injury is a need of his
character."
"That's what his psychiatrist used to say to me ," said
Elfrida .
"But I wonder," said Corde , "whether he's still in
touch with Cousin Maxie. "
"Ah , that's just it," said the Judge. "It would give a
new publicity boost to old Detillion. But he hasn't put
328 SAUL BELLOW •
out any statements. And we'll have to wait for the

hearing before we can be sure that Mason intended to
jump bail. "
"Our Uncle Harold was with the Marines who
chased out Sandino in the twenties ," said Corde.
Elfrida said, "I doubt that Mason was ever told that
fact . " She now gave the conversation a different tum.
" You never said, Albert, that you had met Dewey
Spangler overseas. "
"No. It never occurred to me to say. How did you
hear about it?"
"How did you not hear?'' said Elfrida. " Haven't you
seen the papers?"
"No. We canceled before Christmas and delivery
hasn't started again."
"And didn't anybody call you about it? It's unnatu
ral . "
"I keep the phones unplugged. I don't want Minna
disturbed. She's had enough of telephones. "
"I'm astonished. I would have expected somebody, a
colleague from the college or a neighbor in the build
ing, to knock at your door . "
"Why, what i s i t i n the papers that's s o extraordi
nary?"
"A column by our old friend Dewey , where he lets
himself go . How you met behind the iron curtain, the
boyhood friendship, Lakeview High, your wife's pre
dicament. I got more information from that little mug
than from you. "
"I don't know the man myself," said the Judge. "I
only hear from Elfrida how he used to be when you
were youngsters . I follow his column from time to time,
but this article is kind of a departure , unusually person
al. "
"How personal?" Corde asked Elfrida .
"A certain amount of reminiscence ," said Elfrida.
"Pretty brief but packed tight, and really pretty curious
-full of observations about American society and
culture, and Albert Corde of Chicago as a phenome-
non. What would you call it-a short study , a personal
memoir, and if you ask me , also a love letter. Not in
such good taste, either. "
Corde's heart sank. He experienced also a kind of
vascular tightening in the legs, like a man who gets to
his feet too quickly, momentarily paralyzed.
"We've upset Albert ," said Elfrida to her husband.
"When the pink turns up on the cheekbones and his lips
press together, he's worried or hurt. I didn't find
anything so harmful in what Dewey wrote , Albert.
Overblown. Pretentious . Here and there he actually
slipped into poetry, and I don't think he has a real gift
for that kind of thing . "
"He said something similar about m y articles in
·
Harper's, " said Corde.

"Oh, what a comparison ! " said Elfrida. "But the
worst I'd feel in your place is privacy shock. And with
Detillion at work we've all been conditioned or immu
nized to that. Well , Albert, wait at least until you've
re ad him . It isn't so bad. In my opinion, he wanted to
join forces with you. "
"You've got a cppy, haven't you . " Corde stated
rather than asked this.
"We talked it over before coming," said the Judge ,
"and decided that on the off chance you had missed it,
it was better you should see it , just in case you had to
protect yourself."
"But Elfrida was just saying it wasn't so bad ."
She was opening her alligator purse . "You certainly
could do without this," she said. " Although compara
tively it's minor . " As she handed him the folded paper
she shone her look upon him , but what really-rea/ly!
her eyes were saying he couldn't have told you.
At home, he gave Minna a cup of tea. Then she said she
would lie down and read something-what did he
recommend? She always consulted him about reading
matter. He knew her simple, old-fashioned tastes. Tanti
Gigi, from whom she had learned English at the age of
ten years , had given her poems to learn by heart: "The
Little Black Boy , " "The Sick Rose . " He said, "I'll give
you Blake's Songs. The two contrary states of the
human soul. I was reading Blake while you were at
Wesleyan. "
"And what will you d o with the rest o f your after
noon?"
"Go over a few items on my desk. "
He withdrew to his corner and unfolded Dewey
Spangler's double column of print. It was headed " A
Tale o f Two Cities ."
Corde didn't find it poetic. It was written in Spang
ler's dependable expository prose for the busy reader.
It began with a brief nostalgic paragraph: meeting an
old friend who had been his rival in Miss Gumbeener's
class at Lakeview. In two sentences he did the friend
ship. Corde described the whole event as an exhibition
match-Monstre Gai versus Ennuyeux Sentimental, five
rounds of boxing. The Ennuyeux won the first round.
Dewey ·got off to a clumsy start, speaking of "relation
ships difficult to form with people in public life . " He
didn't need to mention Kissinger and Nelson Rockefel
ler, o.- make them sound like characters out of Plutarch.
But he recovered a little towards the end of the
330
paragraph , evoking the friendship of two "inordinately
bookish high school kids. " He spoke of his gifted pal
Albert Corde , "even then a mysterious individual ,"
who later made a considerable reputation in the Inter
national Herald Tribune, eventually becoming Profes
sor and Dean Corde. The Dean never intended to
mystify anybody, but mystify he did, with his mysteri
ous character. One wonders what effect Deep Analysis
might have had on such a person, but Albert Corde was
inexplicably hostile towards Psychoanalysis . It will por
tray the man at one stroke to record what he once said
about it. "Psychoanalysis pretends to investigate the
Unconscious. The Unconscious by definition is what
you aren't conscious of. But the Analysts already know
what's in it . They should, because they put it all in
beforehand. It's like an Easter Egg hunt. You hide the
eggs and then you find 'em. That's on the up and up.
But Analysis ain't." D�wey went on, "With an attitude
like this my old friend therefore remained mysterious.
"As personal idiosyncrasy this warranted no objec
tion, but not long ago Dean Corde went public and
wrote two mystifying articles about the City of Chica
go, puzzling and disturbing many readers ."
Albert Corde , Spangler wrote , had made his debut
as a journalist with the only literate firsthand account of
the Potsdam Conference. This Dartmouth junior, a GI
who had enlisted and served in France and Germany,
happened to be in Potsdam and wrote a brilliant piece
for The New Yorker. He saw Stalin in an armchair as
plain as you and me ; he saw Churchill's fall from power
and watched Harry Truman play poker and drink
whiskey. Of course he was only a kid, with no back
ground in history or world politics. Corde was then
twenty-two years of age, but his remarkable account of
this conference, which had such dark consequences for
the world, has been unjustifiably neglected by the
anthologist professors and is forgotten. From the first,
the Dean's talent was for observation, not for generali
zation and synthesis (he lacked Spangler's intellectual
•
332 SAUL BELLOW
grand mastery), and he was wise to stay away from
international politics.
But just picture it-the two friends from Lakeview
High School meeting in a Communist capital during the
dismal days of late December. In the hospital , an old
woman dying; and in Chicago a jury trial. The Dean
had become involved in a disagreeable matter involving
the death of a student. There was unpleasant infighting.
This was hardly as important as it appeared to a
hypersensitive man. "To a friend seasoned in modern
politics , covering the world scene in depth for twenty
five years-riot , terrorism, massacre , the strategies of
power-Professor Corde's personal distress seemed
exaggerated. Temperamentally, he was tender-minded ,
incapable of grasping the full implications of world
transformation , the growth of a new technology for
managing human affairs , the new factors , the analytical
paradigms which guide the decisions of authority in all
postindustrial societies . " The Dean was a delicate spirit,
a genuinely reflective person. This was why he gave up
journalism and took cover in the academy. Coming out
again to have a look at the present sociopolitical scene,
he went into shock. His particular brand of humanism
could not prepare him for what he saw in the streets
and skyscrapers. Here was a clear opening (Dewey
became very grand in this next passage) for the revival
of a humanistic outlook. "Underdefinition of the crite
ria by which men are defined opened an opportunity to
Humanists to introduce their models, as against Eco
nomic Man, Psychological Man and other typologies.
But the Dean has no bent for such enterprises. He is
not a man for models , he is a sensitive and emotional
private observer. Trained urbanologists regarded his
Chicago articles as excessively emotional. "
These "paradigms" and the "underdefinition o f the
criteria" were Malraux thrusts, Hegelian world history
in an updated American form. Who among Spangler's
colleagues in Washington or New York could handle
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334 SAUL BELLOW
be taken seriously , without the right clearance . The
Dean's problem had been one of language. Nobody will
buy what you're selling-not in those words. They
don't even know what your product is.
"Professor Corde," Dewey went on, "is very hard on
journalism, on the mass media. His charge is that they
fail to deal with the moral, emotional, imaginative life,
in short, the true life of human beings, and that their
great power prevents people from having access to this
true life . What we call 'information' he would charac
terize as delusion. He does not say this in so many
words, but in his recent sketches he tries to outline
creatively the right way to apprehend public questions.
If he emphasizes strongly the sufferings of urban popu
lations, especially in the ghettos, it is because he thinks
that public discussion is threadbare, that this is either
the cause or the effect of blindness (or both the cause
and effect) and that our cultural poverty has the same
root as the frantic and criminal life of our once great
cities. He blames the communications industry for this.
It breeds hysteria and misunderstanding. He also
blames the universities. Academics have made no
effort to lead the public. The intellectuals have been
incapable of clarifying our principal problems and of
depicting democracy to itself in this time of agonized
struggle. Reading Dean Corde one is reminded of
certain pages of Ortega y Gasset's The Rebellion of the
Masses (incorrectly translated as The Revolt) and also
of passages in Andre Malraux's memorable conversa
tions with General de Gaulle, and of the final work of
Malraux's dying days . . . .
"But if the Dean is hard on the media he is even
more bitter about the academics. The media are part of
corporate America. They are part of the problem,
hence their 'impartiality' is meaningless . But the uni
versities are a deep disappointment to him. I gather
from his conversation that he thinks academics are not
different from other Americans, they are dominated by
the same consensus and ruled by public opinion. They
were not set apart, with all their privileges, to be like
everybody else but to be different. If they could not
accept difference they could not make the contribution
to culture that society needed. The challenge to the
Humanists was the challenge to produce new models.
"I am not," Dewey astonishingly wrote, " an admirer
of Jean Jacques Rousseau. I would not agree with
Immanuel Kant that he was a great man. He did,
however, understand that the challenge of modem
egalitarian societies would be the creation of high
human types , such individuals as would satisfy the
human need for stature and love of the beautiful. This
would not be elitism in the ordinary acceptance of the
tenn but generosity and love of humankind , the exact
opposite of snobbery and false superiority. I assume
that this was why my friend Albert Corde gave up a
quite successful career in journalism to become a
professor. His hopes disappointed , he went out to
investigate the surrounding city, and he will forgive me
for saying that he went slightly mad. It wasn't only the
collapse of urban America that got him but what Julien
Benda called the treason of the intellectuals . . . .
"
Oh, fuck you, Dewey, and your Julien Benda!

Corde , knuckling his eyes, smarting with sweat , read
on. There wasn't much left , thank God.
"Dean Corde must have offended his colleagues
deeply . They should have been irradiating American
society with humanistic culture , and in the Dean's book
they are failures and phonies. That's what his articles
reveal. I wonder whether my dear old friend realizes
this. I am not sure that he has a good idea of what they
were up against, the magnitude of the challenge facing
them. Who would, who could make high human types
of the business community, the engineers , the politi
cians and the scientists? What system of higher educa
tion could conceivably have succeeded? But Dean
Corde is unforgiving. Philistinism is his accusation.
Philistine by origin, humanistic academics were drawn
magnetically back again to the philistine core of Ameri-
340 SAUL BELLOW
valuable institution the college was for the city, along
with Northwestern and the University of Chicago, and
how important it was for young people learning about
painting and poetry, reading history, classics, the sci
ences, to have libraries and fine instruction. These
islands, how badly the country needs them. I almost
said, 'If only to counterbalance the S . M . establish
ments. ' "
"What are those?"
"The sadomasochistic shops , where people now go as
if to the beauty parlor-with virtually the same carefree
attitude. "
"You have a really endearing character, but you do
somehow work in such strange things," said Minna.
"But I didn't say. I almost. I only told him I was
grateful to the college. I told him no lies, and I wasn't
perverse . Anyway, he wasn't really listening. He ac
cepted my resignation letter and passed to another
subject-Beech. Did I intend to write an article about
Beech? I said that I guessed I would do more writing."
"Along the lines of the Harper's pieces?"
"Oh, absolutely. Why not?"
She said , having thought about this for some miles,
"It won't be a restful life . "
"I won't d o articles like the Chicago ones unless I'm
stirred in the same peculiar way. That doesn't happen
often. I'm quiet enough as a rule. I don't like contro
versy. I'm good enough at my trade. "
"But how are you going t o practice it?"
"We'll have to see what happens. Dewey said I had
quite a successful career in journalism. I'll take it up
again, as quietly as I can . "
"Now will you tell me about Beech?"
"I spent a long afternoon with him . "
"The best people in Geophysics swear b y him . "
"I like the man."
"And you've decided to do the article? Wouldn't that
be a good way to start over?"
"I arranged to help him with it. Those lead conclu-
sions are his, not mine. Something deadly is happening.
I'm with him to that extent. So I'll advise him about
language only. Then I won't have to agree ignorantly. "
She took his hand from the steering wheel, pressed
it, kept it in her lap. She said , presently, "We aren't too
far from the Indian mission. We can stop there and take
a break."
·
"The trip is tiring you. We didn't make smart ar

rangements. We should have flown in yesterday and
rested overnight in Los Angeles. I can stand that place
for about ten hours . "
The mission was i n a sheltered, warm zone . Corde
and Minna looked into the handicrafts shop-beads,
turquoise, arrowheads, gloves in the dim showcases,
clusters of moccasins gathering dust in the corners.
Then they sat in the inner court. "Five minutes in the
sun?" said Minna. She followed her schedule. The
heavy arches of the cloister formed a small square. In
the foreground, flowers ; behind the whitewashed
arches, darkness, but tranquil darkness.
Corde said, "You know what? It threw Dewey
Spangler into a frenzy of happiness to have such
crushing wonderful things to say. It put him right
on the summits. And best of all, he could blame the
mischief on me . He was so delirious that he couldn't
think what it might do to his pal. Maybe it was the
cuts in his intestines that put him in such a state ."
"I wouldn't think any more about him," said Minna.
When they returned to the rental car, Corde reluc
tant, dragging (but realistically, how long could they
stay seated in a mission garden choked with flowers?) ,
Minna said, "Valeria had a high opinion of you,
Albert. " Her head was down ; she clipped the seat belt
into place. "She trusted you. "
"You think so?"
"What you told her last of all was what she wanted
most of all to hear . "
N o more was said o f this. Corde was moved. His
wife , unskilled in human dealings, was offering him
342 SAUL BELLOW
support from her own main source . What came through
Minna's words was that she was alone in the world; and
with him; she did have him, with all his troubling
oddities; and he had her.
Minna now began to talk about the chances for a
clear night. Here on the lower slopes the sun was
shining, and that was promising, but conditions
changed very rapidly here. When it was cloudy, the
dome didn't open. She said that several times.
"I'm sending up prayers for optimum weather," he
said. "But I read here and there that the new robots out
in space transmit fantastic information, pictures you
can't get from the ground . "
"That's mostly true. But there's something I need
from the two-hundred-inch telescope. "
"Even that, I understand , you can see o n the 1V
monitors in the control room. "
"Won't do," said Minna. " I have t o have the plates. "
"You aren't going to sit up there, in the eye of the
telescope , or the cage , or whatever it's called? I hope
not. "
"I've done i t a hundred times . "
"But this time?"
"I think yes . "
"Can't you send u p somebody with instructions?"
"No. Last time one of the smart young people made
the fine corrections for me, and the results were
unusable. "
"But you aren't well enough, Minna. "
"No? I am, though . "
Interference was out o f the question. The profession
al line! How severe she was, drawing it. How he
presented himself at the barrier, petitioning. For her
own good. It amused them both-each in his own way.
"You've lost too much weight," was all that he found to
say.
"I'll be wearing the insulated suit . And they keep the
cage warmer now than in the old days . "
At five thousand feet there was snow on the ground,
a thin cover over the huge raw clearing around the
dome.
"No clouds at all , " said Minna. "We're lucking out.
Now, if no fog develops . . . "
To his great relief, she got the weather she wanted,

and while she was getting herself ready , talking to
colleagues, he explored the enormous dark emptiness
of the dome , passing under the gray barrel of the great
telescope and hearing the stir of the machines that
operated it. He was warmly dressed, he had brought his
parka from Chicago. One of the younger assistants in
the observatory was assigned to keep him company.
"Let's inspect the layout . Have you ever seen it be
fore?"
"Not this particular dome, and never any of them
with a guide. "
The tall young man, bearded , had the air of a ski
instructor, and he talked about right ascension, mir
rors, refractions, spectrum analysis. "I can't follow,"
Corde said at last. They stopped in midftoor, a vast,
unlighted, icy, scientific Cimmerian gloom. The huge
ness of the dome referred you-far past mosques or
churches, Saint Paul's, Saint Peter's---to the real scale
of the night. We built as big as we could build for the
purpose of investigating the real bigness. The dome's
interior was segmented by curved beams. Corde had
never been inside an empty space so huge. The floor
was endless to cross. Despite his sweaters, coat, double
socks, parka, he was cold on the encircling catwalk.
They stepped out on the outer gallery-light steel
spongework underfoot; you could see through it. The
snow extended to the edge of the enormous clearing.
He went inside again.
If you came for a look at astral space it was appropri
ate that you should have a taste of the cold out there, its
power to cancel everything merely human. That he
understood so little of the tall young man's lingo made
no difference ; he went on talking, but Corde several
times refused to go to the rooms below where you could
344 SAUL BELLOW •
sip coffee , read magazines , practice billiard shots .

Minna had said when she was leaving him, "It looks
now as if they're sure to open by and by. I'll send for
you . ' '
Her messenger found Corde and his guide o n the
catwalk. Dr. Corde was going to the cage, and would
he like to ride up , too? Yes , he did, of course.
He ran down eagerly. The junior colleague who had
been guiding him was coming along to help Minna
install herself in the eye of the huge instrument. She
was wearing the tight-fitting suit. As she went into the
open lift , Corde following, he asked again, "You're
sure you can take the cold? "
" Don't fuss over me . I'll come down if I can't , my
dear . "
Tru e , h e was foolishly fussing. She had lost her
natural insulation. Temporarily emaciated. Permanent
ly excited. She said to the stooping, bearded young
man, "?\ly husband has never been up."
"Never?" He pressed the switch and they began to
rise.
The lift was attached to one of the structural arches.
It didn't go straight up; it followed a curved course .
Except in one low corner of the interior, there was no
light. And now the vast dome rumbled. Something
parted , began to slide above them. Segments of the
curved surface opened quickly and let in the sky-first
a clear piercing slice. All at once there was only the lift,
moving along the arch. The interior was abolished
altogether-no interior-nothing but the open , freez
ing heavens . If this present motion were to go on, you
would travel straight out . You would go up into the
stars. He could make out the edges of the open dome
still. And because there was a dome, and the cold was
so absolut e , he came inevitably back to the crematori
um, that rounded top and its huge circular floor, the
feet of stiffs sticking through the curtains, the blasting
heat underneath where they were disposed of, the
killing cold when you returned and thought your head
was being split by an ax. But that dome never opened.
You could pass through only as smoke .
This Mount Palomar coldness was not to be com
pared to the cold of the death house. Here the living
heavens looked as if they would take you in. Another
sort of rehearsal, thought Corde. The sky was tense
with stars , but not so tense as he was, in his breast.
Everything overhead was in equilibrium, kept in place
by mutual tensions. What was it that his tensions kept
in place?
And what he saw with his eyes was not even the real
heavens. No, only white marks, bright vibrations,
clouds of sky roe, tokens of the real thing, only as much
as could be taken in through the distortions of the
atmosphere. Through these distortions you saw ob
jects, forms, partial realities. The rest was to be felt.
And it wasn't only that you felt, but that you were
drawn to feel and to penetrate further, as if you were
being informed that what was spread over you had to
do with your existence , down to the very blood and the
crystal forms inside your bones. Rocks, trees, animals,
men and women, these also drew you to penetrate
further, under the distortions (comparable to the at
mospheric ones, shadows within shadows) , to find their
real being with your own. This was the sense in which
you were drawn.
Once, in the Mediterranean, coming topside from a
C-class cabin, the uric smells and the breath of the
bilges, every hellish little up-to-date convenience there
below to mock your insomnia-then seeing the morn
ing sun on the tilted sea. Free! The grip of every
sickness within you disengaged by this pouring out. You
couldn't tell which was out of plumb, the ship, or
yourself, or the sea aslant-but free ! It didn't matter,
since you were free ! It was like that also when you
approached the stars as steadily as this.
The lift stopped and his wife , in the sort of thermal
suit she wore , smiled at him . Perhaps his parka amused
her. They had reached the top of the telescope. She
•
346 SAUL BELLOW
climbed down into the pit of it , into the cage filled with
technical apparatus-gauges, panels glowing, keys to
press, wires. The stooped assistant got in with her to
help her to hook up. The young man was quick. Agile,
he climbed again into the lift. She waved to her
husband , cheerful , and closed herself in. She was
Corde's representative among those bright things so
thick and close.
Corde said , "She'll be all right, I suppose . She's not
too long out of the hospital."
The young man pressed the switch for the descent.
"Never saw the sky like this, did you?"
"No. I was told how cold it would be . It is damn
cold . "
"Does that really get you, do you really mind i t all
that much?"
They were traveling slowly in the hooked path of
their beam towards the big circle of the floor.
"The cold? Yes. But I almost think I mind corning
down more. "

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The Critics Acclaim

THE DEAN'S DECEMBER

"THE VITALITY, HUMANI TY, ANGER AND WI T OF

"THE LATES T AND BEST ... his fine, fictional

"Bellow is brilliant In this meticulously crafted

"THE DEAN'S DECEMBER... is renewed testa­

POCKET BOOKS. a Simon & Schuster divisiOn of

Copyright© 1982 by Saul Bellow Ltmited

Published by arrangement with Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc

All rights reserved, mcluding the nght to reproduce

First Pocket Books pnntmg January. 1983

POCKET and colophon are regtstered trademarks

Pnnted tn the U S.A

visitors, Minna was by far the more distinguished. This

husband in the Ministry. He was attached to the family.

T he apartment was shared by Valeria and Tanti Gigi.

ly dim. Radiators turned cold after breakfast. The

up. What if he were accused of selling dollars illegally?

always in their company, didn't care to go off by

herself she bought colored postcards of Westminster

It was an instinct with Corde-maybe it was a weakness

also the dishes on the hors d'oeuvre cart, the slices of

The kid, Mason Zaehner , was the Dean's only nephew ,

To Mason this earnestness was simply a ploy, Uncle

"And ran into some blacks who murdered him.

"Yes, he put you down some."

Each of the long days in Minna's room was a succession

"It's no trifle to Mrs. Corde , nevertheless , that she

"Maybe the information library can let me have the

Rareshes , a member of the family . She held on to that .

use , you heard a frail wooden echo inside. They had

"The Colonel doesn't pay much attention to the

"I was waiting. But facing it is something else."

"They only came out of the woodwork to claim the

"Without them, Grady had no case. He sent the

"I think I understand . . . . It's not personal fear of

In the adjoining room , Minna was on the telephone .

"Wass willst du haben?" i K F =i ıˆi ˇi

For, lo ! with a little rod did I but touch the honey of

i i i 66i i i i i 6Zi _{i i

‘ e i 0i :i J.. i ¯i >i i >i .Zi [ nJi

these synthetics were saturated with the fragrance of

man who directed the research-in the inside position,

Corde had given a full description of Ridpath in

he want to write about Chicago? For once , it would be

The ancient County Hospital, yellow, broad and

unshaven, his big lips cannot close even when he tries

No wonder Harper's lost millions of dollars, printing

dictator and his wife. Corde passed again through

"I'm letting her sleep," said Corde.

"With some real lawyers . . . "

"Nonsense , Albert. There's no real trouble, just

" I never had that in mind. "

"What sort of letters?"

climbed the stairs. Two landings, a wired-glass door

The body of this powerful man was significantly

He made inquiries and was referred to the Public

. . . a strong bald young man with prominent blond

I said , "Oh, but she must have . "

"I've taken the depositions . "

Corde laid aside Valeria's copy of Harper's and tried

write a new version, wider in perspective, closer to the

Or maybe there ought to be a supplement to the Book

"THE DEAN'S DECEMBER... is renewed testa

"Yesterday I was received by Mr. and Mrs. Presi

"The trip is tiring you. We didn't make smart ar